The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) told most civilian Federal agencies today to get their Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans (ARRFs) wrapped up by March 13, and instructed that those plans should feature a “significant reduction” in full-time employees achieved by eliminating positions “that are not required.”
In addition to reductions in force, OMB and OPM said that the agency reorganization plans should seek to achieve four goals: 1) better service for the American people; 2) increased productivity; 3) reduced real property footprints; and 3) lower budget toplines.
“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” the memo says. “At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public. Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hardworking American citizens.”
As with other Trump administration directives aimed at downsizing government, including its Jan. 20 hiring freeze order, the RIF and Reorganization push is not touching the military, and is taking a go-slower approach to some agencies that provide major Federal benefits to citizens.
OMB and OPM said the Feb. 26 memo does not apply in any way to:
- Positions that are necessary to meet law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities;
- Military personnel in the armed forces and all Federal uniformed personnel, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Commissioned Officer Corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;
- The U.S. Postal Service;
- The Executive Office of the President; and
- Positions requiring presidential appointment or Senate confirmation, non-career positions in the Senior Executive Service and Schedule C positions in the excepted service, and appointments of non-career employees if approved by agency leadership.
The memo features an additional carve-out for agencies that provide “digital services to citizens” – including the Social Security Administration, Medicare, and veterans’ health care.
OMB and OPM are instructing those agencies to “not implement any proposed ARRPs until OMB and OPM certify that the plans will have a positive effect on the delivery of such services.”
Today’s memo points back to President Donald Trump’s Feb. 11 executive order that aims to make deep cuts to the Federal government civilian workforce via layoffs, and ordered Federal agency heads to prepare to “initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law.”
The Feb. 11 order emphasizes that agencies should focus on cutting employees deemed not to be related to agency functions that have been authorized by congressional statutes.
Five Federal employee unions quickly filed suit against the order, and a Federal court judge on Feb. 20 blocked a request from unions for a temporary restraining order (TRO) challenging the Trump administration’s reduction-in-force executive orders and “deferred resignation” program.
Judge Christopher R. Cooper, a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in the Feb. 20 decision that the court “likely lacks subject matter jurisdiction” to grant a TRO and referred the plaintiffs to the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to pursue their claims.
House Oversight and Reform Committee ranking member Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ripped into the OMB memo in a statement today.
“This unlawful plan to engineer a massive government reorganization, ripped straight from the Project 2025 playbook, cannot be ordered by executive fiat. Donald Trump is not a king, and we are not his subjects,” he said. “Congress is a coequal branch of government, despite the Republican majority’s pathetic abdication of their constitutional authority. This kind of wholesale remaking of the federal government requires congressional input and authorization.”
“The mass indiscriminate firing of hundreds of thousands of dedicated, nonpartisan civil servants by a wannabe strongman and his unelected pet billionaire will have an immediate and devastating impact on the integrity and capability of our federal workforce,” Rep. Conolly warned.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s mindless approach to slashing the federal workforce and gutting vital programs and protections will render Trump’s government incapable of delivering for the people it is supposed to serve,” the congressman said, adding, “The victims here are the American people.”
“We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to fight this assault on the people’s government in courts of law, in the halls of Congress, and in the court of public opinion,” he pledged. “For the sake of their own constituents who will be harmed by Donald Trump’s wrecking ball approach to government, it is long past time for House Republicans to muster what little courage they have left and join us.”
