House Republicans are gearing up a new round of attacks on federal workers. And while some of the specific attacks are following in Donald Trump’s footsteps, the basic goal is a longstanding Republican one: break the government, so that you can attack the government as broken.
What Republicans claiming is that they just want to be able to make sure federal workers are doing their jobs. “Fire people if they don’t do things they’re supposed to do,” Rep. Virginia Foxx said. But the real plan, beyond the simple degradation of the government into something no one can rely on, is to enable political purges. A bill from Rep. Chip Roy would strip federal workers of civil service protections, making them at-will employees who could be fired for any reason. Say, because they weren’t loyalists of whoever happened to be in power at the moment.
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Trump already made moves in that direction in 2020, with an executive order effectively imposing a political loyalty test on any federal worker whose job involves policy in any way. When then-Office of Management and Budget head Russell Vought started deciding who that would apply to at his agency, he determined that 88% of OMB employees’ jobs were on the line. President Joe Biden set that Trump rule aside, but it shows where Republicans are going with these attacks.
To that end, Republicans also reinstated the Holman Rule, which allows members of Congress to target specific agencies or federal employees for cuts—including pay cuts for individual workers. This rule was dropped in 1983 until Republicans reinstated it in 2017. When Democrats took control of the House in 2019, they let it lapse again. Now it’s back.
As Rep. Jamie Raskin told The Washington Post, “Essentially, they want to wage war on the federal workforce—with the possible exception of certain parts of the military”—and as we’ve seen, even the military comes under attack from Republicans when it doesn’t fully hew to a Republican agenda.
“Weaponization of the government is not their target — weaponization of the government is their purpose,” Raskin said.
The Republican claims that they just want to be sure federal employees are doing their jobs and delivering good service to the government and the people are shown as the lies they are by Republican attacks on IRS funding. The extra funding for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act was largely for customer service roles, to reduce call wait times and improve technology—but that money has come under attack from Republicans under the claim that all of it is intended to fund armed IRS agents who will come after Republican voters. “Taxation is theft, and this is armed robbery,” Rep. Lauren Boebert said last year.
As a result of the new funding, the IRS is reporting reduced call wait times. That’s not going to stop Republican attacks on the idea that funding can improve government services.
Rep. Jim Jordan, meanwhile, is seeking to drag mid-level career federal employees to testify at his various show trials, for instance, accusing the FBI and Justice Department of making politically biased (against Republicans) decisions about investigations. The Justice Department responded that it would not be “making line agents and line attorneys available for congressional testimony or interviews with the committee, in line with a long-standing policy to protect the privacy and safety of those working on investigations.”
All that is in addition to the predictable, nonstop Republican efforts to cut the budgets of agencies that exist to help regular people.
Even if the Senate and Biden are able to block House Republican efforts to weaken civil service protections and cut federal worker pay or benefits, the attacks have an effect. “House Republicans “can still score points by making government less attractive, and damage is done when you disparage federal employees just as we’re trying to make federal employment more attractive,” Rep. Gerald Connolly told the Post. And exactly so—many federal workers could make more money elsewhere, but choose government work in part for stability. By undermining that and opening federal workers up to constant attacks and vulnerability depending on which political party is in power, Republicans weaken the government even if their immediate plans are blocked for now.
