The annual DoD authorization bill recently passed by Congress accepts, with some changes, language from the Senate version that requires a cut in federal employee DoD jobs equivalent to the planned reduction in military personnel over the next five years.
Cuts are estimated in the range of more than 30,000 jobs, or around 5 percent, of the civilian DoD workforce. The language also requires that contractor jobs be cut equivalently, although how that would be enforced is unclear since contractors determine the size of their own workforces and the government works in terms of dollars spent on contracts, not contractor personnel.
In accepting the language, the House added several restrictions requiring that the cutting is "developed in a manner that is consistent with statutory force planning requirements and ensures that the DoD civilian and contract services workforces are appropriately sized to support defense needs."
The bill also requires DoD to "consider statutorily required workload analyses and risk assessments in determining core or critical functions to be excluded from the savings requirements."
It further orders a GAO report on how the cuts are being carried out.
