Congress poised to partner with Trump on dealing with federal employees

Tom Temin You’re really saying that last week was a parade of events heading up the Hill or happening on the Hill.

Mitchell Miller Right. What a whirlwind of activity. And that was just week one. Let’s see what’s next. As you know, Congress has been talking really hard about what this new Trump administration will mean for federal workers. And many Republicans in Congress believe that having full control of Congress is a chance to start cutting budgets and staffing for federal agencies. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, says he welcomes ideas from the Department of Government Efficiency, which, as you know, is not actually a government agency but an advisory agency led by Elon. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will seek major cuts in federal spending. Ramaswamy said he believes requiring federal employees to come into the office five days a week would lead to the resignations of many feds. He even suggested that this rate could go up to 25 percent. Many people are skeptical about this. I asked Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) about this, and he said he is always open to considering ideas for reform and changes to federal agencies. However, he also states that the establishment of this organization does not mean that it has the authority to implement its recommendations.

Tim Kaine No unilaterally appointed group of self-proclaimed experts will be able to decide on its own to dissolve the government of federal employees. Congress has the power of the purse. Most of these institutions are established by law.

Mitchell Miller Kaine points to the Department of Education, which conservatives have said they’ve wanted to get rid of for years, claiming it’s just a big bureaucracy. Kaine says if they want to do that, they’ll have to go through the legislative process. As you mentioned, Congress is here, right? Introduce a bill, see if it moves forward and where it goes. Additionally, the Office of Government Efficiency has more than a year to gather its recommendations. And we both know that the history of Washington is full of these blue-ribbon panels and recommendations to reduce spending to the extent that they’re adopted, they’re often pretty piecemeal. So I’ll be interested to see what actually happens.

Tom Temin Yes, and there were members of Capitol Hill who regularly published pamphlets, actually print magazines of all the waste programs, Proxmire-type Golden Fleece things. This has disappeared recently.

Mitchell Miller Right. And I think it’s going to be like, they’re going to try to bring back a ‘here’s the pigs in the hole’ kind of image and try to have a bunch of things – basically they’re saying they’re going to have a ranking of some of the worst projects or the things they see as the biggest waste of money. So we’ll have to see what they actually come up with.

Tom Temin Studies on the sexual life of the African Viper or something like that. What about remote working? So it hasn’t appeared yet. But you mentioned that Ramaswamy said that ‘lack of teleworking could force people to quit’. So is there a policy you’ve seen anywhere yet?

Mitchell Miller I don’t have any. I’ve heard a lot of talk about this. And we’ve talked about Iowa senator Joni Ernst (R) over the last couple of years, there are people who are really pushing for legislation to hold institutions accountable. But as for what the Trump administration will actually demand or require, other than making a lot of statements about the fact that government employees need to be in the office if they are going to work. For them, they haven’t really said what they think the parameters should be, whether it’s a day of remote work, a week, or whatever it might be. And as you know, there’s a recent study showing that people who work remotely can be more productive. And you can certainly expect many lawmakers, including (Rep.) Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) of the Washington area and others, to point to that fact and say that there is actually value in employing workers. You will be able to work remotely. And so we’ll have to see what happens. But they haven’t found anything specific yet. So we’ll have to see.

Tom Temin We speak with WTOP’s Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller. Meanwhile, many appointments are coming to the Senate. So this will take up a lot of Senate time. But this will be voted on in the new session, not in the expired session, right?

Mitchell Miller Right. So there’s going to be a lot of speculation about what’s going to happen with all these cabinet nominees that the president-elect puts forward. And I think one of the most interesting things, without getting into the details of each of these candidates, is how this will actually impact the system. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.S.D.), the incoming Senate majority leader replacing longtime Republican leader Mitch McConnell, will truly have his work cut out for him. He basically said everything was on the table. He wants to move to a regular routine. He wants those candidates to appear before traditional hearings, review them and see if those committees recommend the candidates. But as we both know, President-elect Trump has different ideas. He wants to move things faster. And what’s going to be really interesting to see is at what point do Republicans in the Senate say, okay, we’re going to go along with the president-elect and continue with these recess appointments. , as you know, was not used much. They were last used under President Barack Obama. Used this a little over 30 times and it really got used a lot. And of course, many people thought it was abused under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But what’s interesting is to see what John Thune means, okay, the President really wants this person to pass. I’m going to go ahead and take a ten-day break here and let this person pass. Complaints will rise from the Democratic side and they will try to throw sand into the gears to slow this down. But Democrats have no power here because of this political trilogy. So it’s going to be a really interesting constitutional and congressional moment to see whether we get to that point and then whether the president-elect goes even further and potentially dissolves Congress, at least for a while. Ten days if he really wants to reach someone. And we’ll have to see if there will be legal challenges to see if that happens – I’m sure there will. So many big problems will arise next year.

Tom Temin And in the meantime, there’s the lame duck session where there’s some work that needs to be done because it’s a continuing resolution that ends in December. What looks like it’s going to happen there this week?

Mitchell Miller Right. I think we’ll start to see things calm down a bit this week. I mean, we’re still going to encounter more candidates, and a lot of interesting things are going to happen in connection with that. However, traditional legislative business that should have been done during the lame duck period needs to be addressed. This includes the NDAA, the major defense bill, and the farm bill. And of course, there’s a lot of talk about FEMA running out of money due to the recent hurricanes and Small Business Administration loans running out. So they will discuss such issues on Tuesday. In fact, speaking of FEMA, director Deanne Criswell is being called before a subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure panel. This is a bit of a holdover from the political season because Republicans are upset that some FEMA workers allegedly had a FEMA worker in front of them saying people with Trump signs shouldn’t go to their homes, and that person was given a permit. To go. FEMA, of course, says this is an anomaly. But more broadly, Criswell will testify about what kind of funding FEMA needs. And there’s going to be a lot of attention around that. And of course the big question is: What will happen to the actual budget? It looks like we’re going to go into some sort of traditional mode right now, and eventually all of this will be collected by the deadline on December 20th. And we’ll have to see what kind of short-term spending plan they come up with. Republicans, unsurprisingly, are trying really hard to move forward into the new year so they can deliver on their priorities after President-elect Trump actually takes office. But we’ll have the usual drama over the next few weeks to find out exactly how this will play out.

Tom Temin So, has anyone calculated when the next debt ceiling date will come?

Mitchell Miller This will be another big event, right? I don’t actually know off the top of my head when the actual deadline for this is. But as you know, over the years this always becomes a big problem.

Tom Temin And by the way, is the Capitol completely buttoned up?

Mitchell Miller Like that. And obviously there’s a lot of activity going on after Congress isn’t here during the campaign season. There was no one here for more than six weeks. However, in the meantime, they were setting up many scaffoldings and fences for the opening. And you can see there’s more security apparatus around the Capitol right now. And in the meantime, the Capitol Police have changed the way they handle things. For example, if lawmakers were holding a press conference outside, there were times when no officers or officials were actually there. Now they’re actually putting in the bike racks and kind of limiting the access and making sure there’s some protection around that. And of course, we’re going to see all sorts of increases as we move towards January 6th. Of course, January 6 is very different from 2021. But you can still definitely feel the increased security around the US Capitol. But it’s also nice to see all the lawmakers back and all the people visiting the Capitol once again.

Tom Temin Maybe they’ll pull a hot toddy on each other, at least before they start real battles next season.