Fedweek

Republicans have signaled an intention to revoke Biden’s order in turn and reinstate Schedule F in a future GOP administration. Image: Rob Wilson/Shutterstock.com

Updated: Members of Congress working to change the law to prevent future administration from creating an excepted service Schedule F through an executive order such as the one that then-President Trump issued in 2020 have said they will keep trying, but both time and opportunities are running out in the current Congress.

The House now has passed, and the Senate could pass within days, the annual defense budget bill (HR-7776) that had represented the best chance of enactment. The House had attached language to that must-pass bill to put such a ban into law and a similar move was planned in the Senate, but leaders decided to forgo a vote on the Senate version and then a House-Senate conference, and instead produced a new bill for final voting the dropped the House language.

Sponsors of the ban don’t want to let the issue wait until next year, since it is all but guaranteed that Republicans would not allow the House to agree to such language once they are in control.

In a comment typical of several others pushing for the ban, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said that “I will keep working to get this legislation across the finish line as soon as possible.” How that could be accomplished was not immediately clear, however.

Kaine and others have introduced separate legislation for a ban, mirroring language the House passed as its own separate bill, but the Senate has not considered the issue even at the committee level and Republicans might be able to block any such bill called for a direct Senate vote.

Apart from the defense bill, the only truly “must-pass” bill remaining in this Congress would be in some form to head off a partial government shutdown with current funding authority expiring Friday (December 16). However, an appropriations bill would last only to the end of the current fiscal year at the most, leaving the language similarly subject to rejection by the GOP House majority next year. Whether permanent language could be attached to such a bill is uncertain.

The available time also is running out. While it is now almost guaranteed that Congress won’t meet its schedule of adjourning on the 16th, it could stay in session with Democrats still controlling the House only up to January 3.

Failure to pass the language would have no short-run effects since President Biden revoked his predecessor’s order soon after taking office, but Republicans have signaled an intention to revoke Biden’s order in turn and reinstate Schedule F in a future GOP administration. That would mean moving potentially tens of thousands of competitive service jobs involved with policy matters into the excepted service, where employees would lose most of their civil service protections and where vacancies could be filled without competition.

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