About 150 employees of the Office of Personnel Management are facing furloughs and possible layoffs by the Trump administration if Congress blocks a plan to dismantle the department, The Washington Post is reporting.
The career employees would be sent home without pay starting on October 1, according to the Post, which attributed the information to an internal briefing document it obtained.
House Democrats and some Republicans have indicated that Congress is not going to break up the department, which has 5,565 employees. But the administration officials want a commitment from Congress to do so by June 30 or they will trim the staff, the Post said.
“This is a crisis building for years,” Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget and acting OPM director, said.
“We believe a legislative solution would be the most straightforward answer. But we’ve made it very clear we can’t wait without action.”
And Fox News reported the administration is looking to divide the OPM’s responsibilities up among three agencies. The office presently manages 2.1 million civilian federal workers.
The news network reported the office is plagued by a backlog of retirement-related paperwork and poor hiring practices.
But Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., who chairs the House Oversight Committee’s government operations panel, said: “The Trump administration is taking 150 federal employees hostage unless we consent to a plan that has no rationale and is nothing more than a political gambit to give the White House control of our long-standing merit-based civil service system.”
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