Vice President Vance warned on Sunday that cuts to the federal workforce will only get “deeper” as the government shutdown drags on.
In an interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” host Maria Bartiromo asked the vice president about President Trump describing the moment as an “opportunity” and about how significant the cuts would be.
“The longer it goes on, Maria, the more significant they’re going to be,” Vance said. “If you remember, we went nine days before announcing any significant layoffs.
“Again, the president of the United States wanted to reopen the government. He was trying to work with Democrats in order to make that happen. But the longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be,” he continued.
Vance also said that the cuts ahead are likely to be “painful,” but he blamed them on Democrats, who say they won’t agree to the GOP plan to reopen the government until they find a solution to the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year, causing insurance premiums to increase.
“To be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful,” Vance said. “This is not a situation that we relish. This is not something that we’re looking forward to, but the Democrats have dealt us a pretty difficult set of cards.”
Hundreds of thousands of workers have been furloughed since the shutdown began at the beginning of the month, and the Trump administration, in a court filing on Friday, said more than 4,000 federal employees would soon be fired because of the shutdown.
