OMB and OPM said a Schedule F would usher in a political patronage system in federal hiring. Image: Orhan Cam/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA GAO report on the mixed response by federal agencies to the Trump administration’s Schedule F order comes as new step has been taken in Congress to change civil service law to prevent any similar future executive order.
In the latest move, several Senate Democrats said they will seek to attach language banning a new Schedule F to the DoD budget bill when it comes to a vote there—with Congress now in recess, though, that will have to wait for the post-election session. An amendment to another bill would need only a simple majority vote rather than the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass such language as a separate bill.
The House already has passed such language both as a separate bill and as an amendment to its version of the DoD bill—guaranteeing at least that the issue would be considered in an upcoming conference on the latter, which is one of the annual “must-pass” bills for Congress. A Senate vote before the conference in favor of such an amendment would virtually guarantee approval.
Enactment of such language before the end of the current Congress has become a top priority for Democratic leaders on civil service issues, given the stated intentions by Republicans of reviving such an order in a future GOP White House and the potential of Democrats losing control of one or both chambers in the upcoming elections.
Meanwhile, in comments on GAO’s report on the Schedule F excepted service category that the Trump administration created and that the Bide administration immediately revoked, OPM and OMB issued a joint statement to “reaffirm the Biden-Harris administration’s steadfast opposition to Schedule F, and to reiterate our support for the dedicated members of the federal civil service who have devoted their careers to serving the American people across multiple administrations.”
OMB director Shalanda Young and OPM director Kiran Ahuja said that Schedule F “rested on the false and harmful assumptions regarding the effectiveness and merit of the career civil service. And far from promoting merit-based personnel hiring, we now know that the prior administration sought to use Schedule F as a vehicle for replacing non-partisan civil servants with individuals hired solely based on their ideological and political beliefs. The American people long ago rejected such a patronage system in federal hiring.”
They said that career federal employees at their own agencies “provide critical expertise, continuity and stability in helping our agencies and the entire federal government meet the needs of the American people. It is essential that our career employees remain empowered to execute our important missions, free from political interference or intimidation.”
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