GovExec Daily:  GovExec Daily: Schedule F Might Be Coming Back

Ross Gianfortune
This is GovExec Daily, where we bring you the federal stories that really matter.  It's July 28, 2022 . I’m Ross Gianfortune.

In October 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed a controversial executive order creating a new class of federal employees excepted from the competitive service. The Schedule F plan made it easier to move career federal workers in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” jobs from the General Schedule into a new job classification absent most civil service protections, essentially making them easier-to-fire, at-will employees. The timing of the EO made it so that the administration was not able to use it before leaving office in January 2021, when President Joe Biden took office and rescinded the order in his first week.

According to reports in Axios last week and confirmed by today’s GovExec Daily guest, people close to the former president are planning on bringing back Schedule F and expanding on it. A former Trump administration official told GovExec that former officials and current confidantes of Trump are creating lists of names to supplant existing civil servants. According to one former aide, the list numbers approximately 50,000 names.

In a speech this week at the America First Policy Institute, Trump urged Congress to pass a law that would make it easier to “fire rogue bureaucrats,” shifting the focus from the executive branch to the legislative. But, however Schedule F returns, it will certainly be fought by public service unions and good government activists.

GovExec Senior Correspondent Eric Katz is covering the story. After a short break, he’ll join me to talk about the potential return of Schedule F.

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Ross Gianfortune 
According to reports, a second Donald Trump presidential term would bring back and expand on Schedule F, the controversial proposal to upend the civil service. Former aides said that some in Trump’s orbit are already making lists of public servants to transfer into Schedule F and potentially fire, indicating that a second Trump term would involve massive purges of federal employees.

GovExec reporter Eric Katz is covering the story. He joins me now to discuss how a second Trump administration would use Schedule F to reshape government. Welcome back to the show.

Eric Katz 
Thanks for having me.

Ross Gianfortune 
So Schedule F might be returning but in a much bigger way. And the thing that stuck out to me was this suppose that list of people to fire and what kind of chilling effect it will have on feds? What is this list? How many people do the Trump acolytes want to fire when they take office again, and what effects will that have on the civil service?

Eric Katz 
Yeah, so there's a list that seems to be sort of cobbled together in the previous administration. You know what, in the few months that Schedule F was in effect, and maybe has been refined or You know, expanded maybe, in your sense. But what the rough number that's been floated to me and others is about 50,000 positions that they that they think would fall under the umbrella of Schedule F, you know, these are the positions that are supposedly, in the category of confidential policy determining policymaking or policy advocating. And that now, what I want to be clear on is they don't necessarily want to fire 50,000 People immediately upon taking office, you mentioned that the chilling effect that this could have, they sort of expect that by virtue of putting this policy together and identifying the 50,000 positions that could be more easily fired, that they won't actually need to do it, it'll it'll sort of create this incentive to, to for employees to fall in line and to not engage in the sort of behavior that the alleged behavior that the Trump administration officials said stymie them from implementing their agenda. You know, one, one quote that we had in the story was, you know, I'm paraphrasing you act one way when you think you can't be fired, because you're entitled to self service protections, but you'll act a different way, when you know that you can be fired more easily. And so maybe there'll be a few examples off the bat that don't, you know, people that will be made example of, but they expect that, after doing that, If Trump were reelected, that that everyone else would sort of be too scared to stand in their way. And, you know, they would be able to, to get everyone to act in a way that is friendlier to their agenda.

Ross Gianfortune  7:09  
Though, when we had former White House official James Sherk on the show, last year, I he basically talked about implementing an administration's agenda and having the right people in the government sort of as a way to implement the agenda following the will of the voters essentially, that's that's what they said, just play devil's advocate a little here. What is the problem with that kind of a? What's the problem with sort of filling the people who are executing the agenda with people who you think well execute the agenda?

Eric Katz 
Yeah, it's a good question. But I suppose, you know, what, what anyone who's, you know, in favor of protections for the civil service will tell you is, and, you know, we've spoken to in my colleagues and I have spoken to many, many people since this came out, and before and after that, that have a lot of problems with this type of thinking. It's that the functioning of government depends on having professional civil service. You know, the purpose of the civil service, in some respects is to help the President and his, his or her administration implement their agenda. But if there's constant turnover, and sort of loyalty tests, then you lose that professional civil service. You know, it becomes what we saw in the 19th century with a spoil system where political patronage is rewarded with jobs and government and the sort of expertise that you need to do any number of the 1000s of things that the government does on a daily basis that could get lost. You know, we talked to Max Stier, who's the president of Partnership for Public Service, it's one of the biggest, the biggest organization, nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that civil service rules are protected. And what Max told us was, you know, carrying out the policies of any president depends on a highly capable professional workforce, and that this set of proposals were directly threatened that and he called it a threat to our democracy and to our ability to be a successful nation. So the The threat that some people see here is extreme. And, you know, they they don't think there's really much room for compromise. It's, it's, you know, you either protect federal employees and allow them to do their jobs, or you don't,

Ross Gianfortune  10:19  
I guess. Well, you know, we can leave it there for now. Well, I'll take off that devil's advocate hat and sort of put on my more general ad analysis hat and just say that I do think what what can be a real problem here as long term thinking, because the idea that trying to implement a President's agenda within a four year term, government doesn't always work that quickly. Certainly the science agencies with long term projects don't the idea that there are cancer moonshots, or the Space Force or other projects that involve long term development of programs. That's a difficult task to do. And it would gum up the works if you're constantly at different points of context, everybody we've had on here. Reggie wells, for example, from SSA, when we talk about presidential transitions, it's a complete nightmare, and you will lose a lot of time to new appointees and new politicals coming in. So to even extend that process to every single job or 50,000 More jobs, I think we already have a concern about government not doing enough, this would grind that more to a halt, particularly when it comes to any new policies. So I'll take off my analyst hat and I will. Let's talk about the nuts and bolts of this a little bit. And we're out. I'm going to play you some some audio here of former President Trump at this week's America First policy institute meeting. I guess it's the first one very exciting the inaugural one, but I'll play this for you. And I want to hear what you have. And then I'll sort of ask what do you think about it and how it would be implemented

Donald Trump
Rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy, or at a minimum just want to keep their jobs, they want to hold on to the jobs, Congress should pass historic reforms, empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who was corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary for the job can be told, did you ever hear this, you're fired? Get out? You're fired.

Ross Gianfortune  12:41  
OK, so he's talking about Congress now, instead of an executive order? What is that going to look like? Is? Is there going to be Congress when he's president again, in the hands of the Republicans so that they could do that? How hard would Democrats fight against that? How could that sort of go through?

Eric Katz 
Yeah. You know, it's interesting that what you're hearing from the President, former president there is calling for congressional action. What we've reported, and others is a call for executive action. You know, what one former official told me was, this could be reinstated. Within five minutes, it was just a matter of, you know, they already have the thing written, they just have to sign it. And I don't know if this was intentional. I mean, it's appeared that he was reading from prepared remarks that Trump said that we need to fire rogue bureaucrats, and I'm calling on Congress to pass legislation to make that possible. So so I don't know if you know, he's not interested in Schedule F, you know, I didn't go anywhere the first time. It's debatable if that was because what what caused that part of it certainly was just that they ran out of time. But so maybe, maybe Trump saw that and said we needed to do this another way. Or maybe he wants to Schedule F Executive Order Plus congressional action, which is certainly possible. You know, what's the likelihood of of that going through? You know, even if, even if Republicans controlled Congress, you know, presumably this would need to pass the 60 vote threshold in the Senate. I don't see that happening. You know, I there's no Democrats that that I know of that would vote for this. And I'm not sure that every Republican word although definitely most, there was a vote. There was a vote recently in the house on it that was attached to a defense policy bill, and it would have basically tried to prohibit Schedule F from ever being implemented again. And every Democrat voted for Right. And I think about five Republicans in the House also voted for that. So minor, but still some Republican interests in in not allowing Schedule F to go through and, you know, if we're talking about codifying it, or something more expanded than that, it's hard to see any sort of bipartisan appetite for that. But, you know, it's interesting that this stuff has made its way back up to Trump's ear, and that it's in his head, and it's something that he's thinking about. And something that, you know, if he does decide to run for a second term, would be something that he would, you know, be thinking about and trying to enact. And I will just note that, in the conversations that we had on this, it wasn't just dependent on Trump being elected. There's other Republicans that these sites, you know, you mentioned, the American first policy institute, those types of groups and others have floated this to other 2024 contenders in the Republican field like Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and they from what we're told, are, are fully on board with trying to put this into place as well.

Ross Gianfortune 
You mentioned Max dire, but what have other good government groups and public sector unions and members of Congress, I'm thinking particularly of those who represent a lot of heads, what have they said about this resurfacing? Or any stuff? They've said in the past? Obviously, for the most part, you would think they'd be against it?

Eric Katz 
Yeah, they are, they are. I've talked to union officials who said, you know, this is extremely concerning, they raised the possibility of fightcamp through legal action. But, you know, depending on whether or not they're their members would have standing. They they all said that, you know, Democrats haven't been out front enough on protecting civil service. And, and, and, you know, union collective bargaining rights, that kind of thing, that that helps protect federal employees. You know, I mentioned the government groups. I mentioned in the bill that are the amendment that was voted on in Congress from representative Gerry Connolly from Virginia. He's sort of spearheaded this fight against Schedule F. And, you know, he said that the Congress should have the role, and in determining whether any federal employees are, are stripped of their civil service protections, and that it shouldn't be up to the president unilaterally. You know, there's there are certain times that that that positions are deemed not have to go through all the normal hiring and firing provisions that are embedded in civil service statute, you know, when agencies are struggling to hire a certain position or, or to meet certain thresholds, like, like in the Obama administration, there was a, quote unquote, schedule adaptation to get more disabled Americans into federal government. But, you know, basically, that the President shouldn't be able to just snap his fingers and strip 50,000 employees of their civil service rights. I just would note that, you know, the proponents of this reform, say that there's not they're not trying to create a loyalty test here. There's not the risk that some of these groups and individuals say that instead, they're just want to make it so then employees can't be deliberately going against what their supervisors tell them to do. They can't they can't stand in the way of policy being enacted and saying, I'm not going to work on that issue. Or, you know, I'm not going to write that regulation. I refuse. They claim that this was happening throughout the bureaucracy during the Trump administration and that it held up a lot of their agenda and that with this policy, in effect, it would prevent that from happening. You know, take that as you will I certainly insubordination is already means to discipline employees in existing law, so I'm not sure what the impact of this would be. But that is their their this is that's how they see this playing out.

Ross Gianfortune  
I guess I would put the sort of analyst hat on and just having covered this for a while, the idea that regulatory power is something that is enabled and executed quickly. Perhaps I don't think the civil service is necessarily the first step there that is in the way. It is a difficult, complicated system. And we can have conversations about bureaucracy writ large. But this idea that because someone's a Democrat or doesn't like the policy, when policy can be executed, as we've had doctors Moynahan and hurt on through administrative burdens otherwise, there are many ways to skin nice cats, I think more than anything that don't involve firing people you don't particularly like, certainly, it's hard to fire federal civil servants. And that's, that's a problem that does need ameliorating. But I think the idea that this is the way to do it, perhaps is to blunt an instrument. So we'll end on this. Because it is a question we've been asking a lot on the show. You've been covering this stuff for a little while, what's the future of the regulatory state the EPA decision came down that fifth circuit SEC decision? Now this is the executive branch of government going the way of the dinosaur?

Eric Katz 
Well, I think maybe that's premature to say, you know, these these decisions in core have are likely to make agencies, you know, probably think twice about the way that they're carrying out their agenda and the way that they craft rules and regulations, and the sort of procedures that they use, and statutory basis that underlie their decision making. But there's nothing that's going to just hope, you know, just prevent them from doing their work full stop, or prevent civil servants from trying to voice their their thoughts and their expertise as they carry out their drops. You know, worth noting that this is all very hypothetical, if Trump or perhaps another Republican is elected, and if they decide to pursue this, and, you know, if it's doesn't get struck down, and if Congress doesn't prevent this from happening at all, legislatively. You know, but it does present a future in which it's a it's a different, it's a different reality, you know, it's a different system, and environment that employees would be operating under, they let you know, we talked about in the story, then you and we've talked about, on this conversation in the chilling effect. employees feel potentially being scared to speak out, or to tell their supervisor or a political appointee, that this is, you know, you're relying on faulty information, or to blow goop blow the whistle through official channels to go to the IG or to go to Congress, because they know that they don't have the same protections anymore. You know, if someone is doing something illegal in an agency, that's typically something we've always wanted to know about, and to shed a light on, but if employees feel free to speak out on that, it's a it's a not a good situation. So you know, we'll have to see how it, how it plays out, and what, how far that they go with this. But it definitely has pretty significant ripple effects, potentially,

Ross Gianfortune 
I may sound like Chicken Little a little bit on this. I know, particularly when I bring up some of the stuff that happened in a supreme court session. But this show in our website, has an audience of a lot of people who will be really affected by this stuff. So I'm trying to get as many sort of perspectives on this because so many of these decisions seem to So change the way things are done, and will really upend a lot of people's lives, particularly our listeners. That's why I I've been pounding on this so much, but I appreciate you Aleut. Illuminating us and Eric, thanks for being on the show.

Eric Katz 
It was great to be here.

Ross Gianfortune 
Thanks for listening to GovExec Daily. Our show was produced by Adam Butler and hosted by me, Ross Gianfortune. We want to thank Eric Katz Haws for joining the program. Our music is the song “Signals” by Catfish Dancing. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You can email us any feedback at podcast @ govexec.com or hit us on Twitter @ Govexec. 

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