Several Democratic senators are seeking more details about lower-level Trump administration appointees, including how much they are being paid after the federal government laid off thousands of career civil servants to cut costs earlier this year.
Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Tim Kaine (Va.), John Fetterman (Pa.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Mark Warner (Va.), Angela Alsobrooks (Md.), Alex Padilla (Calif.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) wrote in a letter to Office of Personnel Management (OPM) acting director Charles Ezell on Wednesday that a memo he penned last month about salary scales and pay raises piqued their interest.
“You issued a memo to the heads and acting heads of departments and agencies encouraging them to offer the maximum available salary to political appointees and sidestep the regular hiring process,” the senators wrote.
“This memo, coupled with the administration’s widespread layoffs of career government workers who have loyally served in the Executive Branch for Presidents of both political parties, makes clear your intention: fire dedicated public servants in droves, cut essential government services, and use taxpayer dollars to instead hire underqualified and overpaid political cronies,” the group continued.
The senators added, “Padding the pockets of political operatives while firing food safety inspectors is nothing short of an egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars and massively wasteful.”
The Democrats also requested brief job descriptions for all Schedule C appointees paid at the highest government tier, which is up to $195,200 annually. They are seeking the information from Ezell within a week.
OPM told The Hill that Schedule C employees go through rigorous vetting and background checks and are required to file financial disclosure forms. Ezell’s memo didn’t change that.
The office added that the characterization in the senators’ letter is misleading because “Schedule C hires are very frequently involved in customer facing roles such as constituent service work.”
In the initial memo, Ezell noted that agency heads have broad authority to fill and set the pay for “Schedule C” roles that don’t require civil service eligibility or competitive hiring procedures.
“Such flexibility is important to attract highly-qualified Schedule C employees to serve in
important confidential, policy-determining, policy-making and policy-advocating roles,” he wrote. “Well-qualified Schedule C employees are needed ‘to drive the unusually expansive and transformative agenda the American people elected President Trump to accomplish.'”
The memo came a week after a report found that government laid off 216,215 workers in March — boosting the total federal job cuts in Trump’s first three months back in office to 279,445 after OPM and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed agency heads to slash employees.
Updated at 12:42 p.m. EDT.
