Fedweek

The Trump administration’s upcoming federal budget proposal is expected to cite the general federal employee hiring freeze as one of the administration’s main initiatives to date, likely presaging plans to keep it in place long-term, although potentially modified. While most of the opposition to the freeze has come from Democrats, Republicans increasingly are joining in. That includes the head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who has asked the Army to report on how it is carrying out its authority to exempt certain occupations from the freeze, following reports of frozen hiring at military child care centers despite an exemption for them under DoD policy. That followed a similar letter to DoD from a group of senators, mostly Republicans, seeking faster approval of exceptions for jobs in maintenance depots and shipyards. And at a hearing, the VA was pressed to create exemptions for processing benefits applications, occupations that were left out of the department’s long list of positions it was excluding.