Government affairs

Legislative Updates

100+ lawmakers urge Trump to reconsider hiring freeze

On Jan. 9, 106 Democratic lawmakers, led by Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), sent a letter to President-elect Donald Trump, requesting that he reconsider his plan to implement, shortly after his inauguration, an immediate hiring freeze across the federal government.

Last October, Trump’s “Contract with the American Voter” laid out a plan for his first 100 days in office; the second item was an immediate hiring freeze through attrition.

“From protecting our national security to providing healthcare to veterans, Americans depend on federal employees each and every day,” Lynch said in a statement. “We should be strengthening the federal workforce by increasing efficiency and ensuring agencies are fulfilling their missions, rather than implementing a devastating hiring freeze that will increase backlogs, decrease the quality of service, and raise contracting costs.”

NALC joined 20 other unions, management groups and employee associations who represent civil servants and retirees to support Lynch’s effort to derail the freeze.

Lynch’s letter also highlighted a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that concluded that hiring freezes implemented during the Carter and Reagan administrations provided an “illusion of control” over federal workforce levels but were “not an effective means of controlling federal employment.”

The GAO report said that such hiring freezes simply served to “decrease efficiency, transparency, and accountability government-wide at the expense of public safety and American taxpayer dollars.”

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