Federal employees who are worried about the future should stop watching President Trump and look up Pennsylvania Avenue, where the real tsunami of civil service reform will likely originate. Trump can order as many hiring and pay freezes as he wishes, but only Congress can change the laws governing civil service hiring, pay, benefits and discipline. Trump’s exemption-laden freeze is mere bluster compared to what the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has already started to design.
Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, started working on comprehensive reform long before Trump began his campaign. He has introduced a resolution backing the idea of moving certain federal operations out of Washington, supports a much more stringent hiring freeze that would fill only one in three federal job vacancies, and wants a faster firing process and higher health care premiums. At the same time, he supports higher pay for some federal jobs.
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