WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Gary Peters (D-MI), Ranking Member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Tom Carper (D-DE) joined U.S. Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY-12), Chairwoman of the Oversight and Reform Committee and Gerald Connolly (D-VA-11), Chairman of the Oversight and Reform Government Operations Subcommittee to request regular briefings to inform Congress about the implementation status of President Trump’s Schedule F Executive Order.
“The executive order could precipitate a mass exodus from the federal government at the end of every presidential administration, leaving federal agencies without deep institutional knowledge, expertise, experience, and the ability to develop and implement long-term policy strategies,” they wrote. “It would be a critical loss for the American people.”
On October 21, 2020, the President issued an executive order that would undermine the foundation of the federal workforce: the civil service, which consists of non-partisan professionals who serve all Americans without regard to political party. This executive action could multiply the number of political appointees within the federal workforce by tens of thousands and permit the mass firing of current federal employees whom agency heads determine make “substantive contributions to executive branch policy.”
Ranking Member Peters led more than 40 U.S. Senators last week to introduce a bill that would block the implementation of the President’s harmful executive order. Chairwoman Maloney and Chairman Connolly also introduced the Saving the Civil Service Act to prohibit the use of funds to implement the order. The bill also would allow any position or appointment that was converted pursuant to the executive order to be converted back to the competitive service and provide anyone converted to a Schedule F who was subsequently fired to be reinstated with back pay.
Click here to read the letter.
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