Congress Should End Government Layoffs: Professor
Harvard University Department of Health Policy and Management professor Benjamin Sommers says Congress should use the current budget debate to “act as a brake on the administration’s layoffs. Current federal budget negotiations offer an opportunity for legislators who are concerned about the loss of expertise and investments in science and public health to take a stand against the cuts. Some members of Congress have begun to speak out, but more need to follow suit and make it clear that future large-scale layoffs without congressional approval will not be accepted. Similarly, scientists, clinicians, public health workers, and voters of all stripes need to communicate the critical importance of a well-funded and staffed federal government. Without a functioning civil service, the U.S. government will lose its ability to protect the health and well-being of the nation.”
Writing in the JAMA Health Forum, Sommers says more than 120,000 federal workers were laid off during the first quarter of this year. “These firings can have a profound effect on the government’s ability to address challenges in public health, science, and medicine,” he declares.
He outlines the impacts of the firings on public health, scientific research, and clinical care, due to the dismissal of one in six FDA employees, one in four CDC workers, 10% of National Institutes of Health staff, freezing of grants to research institutions, and dismissal of up to 15% of Department of Veterans Affairs staff.
He notes the layoffs have demonstrated multiple planning errors and a basic ignorance of how government functions. “After rushing in with sweeping changes,” he writes, “the administration has needed to backtrack repeatedly.”
While the public health implications of the staff cuts should raise serious alarms, Sommers says, the nation also should not overlook the personal toll of lost income and professional lives disrupted. “Civil servants choose to work in government even though most can earn higher incomes in the private sector,” he says. “They do so because they believe in public service. They do not deserve the capricious and cruel treatment to which they have been subjected….” He also points out that thousands of the fired workers are veterans who first served their country in the military and then went to work for the government.
“The medical, scientific, and public health communities must consider practical steps to assist workers displaced by the Trump administration’s actions,” Sommers writes. He suggests that the veterans’ preference given by the federal and many other government entities offers an analogy that could lead to preferential hiring for displaced federal workers. “There are tens of thousands of potential employees with expertise, experience, and commitment,” he says. “A ‘former fed’ hiring priority would appropriately recognize their service and make the best use of their talents.”
Sommers concludes that while breaking things is easy, fixing things is hard and it will take years to recover from the Trump administration’s callous approach to public service workers. “The scientific, technical, and institutional knowledge lost from the civilian workforce is perhaps impossible to replace,” he says. “Even more harmful is the fundamental trust that has been broken by the current administration. For more than a century under more than a dozen presidents of both political affiliations, the federal workforce has been regarded as an important element of the U.S. government and key to implementing the presidential agenda, whatever it may be. The trust between presidential administrations and the federal workforce has been shattered, and it may take decades to rebuild.”