Vice President J.D. Vance on Wednesday ratcheted up the Trump administration’s threat to lay off federal workers if Congress can’t pass a federal spending bill to end the first government shutdown in nearly seven years.
During a rare appearance in the White House press briefing room, Vance said this shutdown may be different from previous ones, in which federal workers that were furloughed eventually returned to their jobs and received back pay.
“We haven’t made any final decisions about what we’re going to do with certain workers,” Vance said. “What we’re saying is that we might have to take extraordinary steps, especially the longer this goes on.”
Cuts to the federal government are “unfortunate consequences” of a shutdown as the Office of Management and Budget looks at what “can we continue to keep running and what unfortunately is going to have to come to an end,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “Unfortunately layoffs are very likely, as the Vice President just said.”
Unions representing federal employees say that threatening to fire federal workers during a shutdown is illegal. The American Federation of Government Employees joined other unions in filing a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday, alleging that the Administration’s threat of mass layoffs are “unlawful.”
“Announcing plans to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal employees simply because Congress and the administration are at odds on funding the government past the end of the fiscal year is not only illegal – it’s immoral and unconscionable,” said AFGE’s national president Everett Kelley.
Vance repeatedly cast Democrats as at fault for the shutdown. While Republicans control both chambers of Congress, about eight Democrats are needed for Senators to reach the 60 votes they need to reopen the government. Vance falsely claimed the talks broke down because Democrats are fighting to extend healthcare coverage for people in the country illegally. People in the country without authorization are not eligible for Affordable Care Act health care subsidies, according to the Health and Human Services website.
Vance also defended President Trump’s sharing of a meme showing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero with a mustache, saying it was “funny” and showed that President Trump was “having a little bit of fun.”When a reporter noted that Jeffries himself had called the video racist, Vance replied: “Hakeem Jeffries said it was racist, and I know that he said that—and I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is, is he a Mexican-American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”
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