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Some Republicans in Congress are increasingly concerned by the Trump administration’s widespread firings of federal workers, especially veterans and employees working on the bird flu outbreak. But as they reach out to the White House, they’re feeling “helpless.”
“For the most part, Republican members are publicly cheering the administration’s push to slash the federal government, which is being led by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk with Trump’s blessing. But privately, many are feeling helpless to counter the meat-ax approach that has been embraced so far, with lawmakers especially concerned about the dismissal of military veterans working in federal agencies as well as USDA employees handling the growing bird flu outbreak affecting poultry and dairy farms,” Meredith Lee Hill reported at Politico Thursday.
“Certainly on the veterans side, we’re asking for information from the administration,” Senate Veterans Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) told Politico. “We are being reassured that no one at the [Department of Veterans Affairs] who has any direct care responsibilities are being terminated or laid off, and we’re just looking for the positions and circumstances in which it’s occurring.”
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Moran said he and his staff have been in touch with the White House and VA Secretary Doug Collins. Other Republicans feel that agency officials don’t have the power to stop the layoffs, so they are focusing on just the White House.
These Republicans have had a small bit of success. For example, when the Trump administration fired employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture working on bird flu, GOP lawmakers “complained to the White House legislative affairs team and other Trump officials,” Hill writes. After, the USDA reversed some of the firings.
“I thought we were supposed to be in a new era of meritocracy. Not the indiscriminate firing of people,” a Republican congressional aide told Politico.
Lawmakers are concerned about whether these changes will cost them in the next congressional races.
READ MORE: ‘Nobody knows what’s going on’: Veteran calls out ‘nerve-racking’ government firings
“I worry what his plans are,” one GOP lawmaker said of the possibility that the Department of Government Accountability would cut Medicare and Medicaid.
The administration is “already uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse across federal agencies and ensuring better stewardship of taxpayer dollars, including for American farmers and families,” a White House spokesperson said.
GOP lawmakers will get involved “if there are things that we think that need to be addressed” or if there are issues “perhaps they’re not considering when they make these decisions,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Wednesday.
“Thune added he thought it was key ‘that we don’t undermine important services,’ including health and safety. But he put his support behind the administration’s efforts to give the federal government a careful ‘scrub’ with the goal of a more limited presence,” Hill writes.
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Other Republicans have been more supportive of the cuts.
“What Elon and the team are doing is what Congress has not had the ability to do. … They are exposing this massive fraud, waste and abuse that we have not been unable to uncover because the deep state has hidden it from us,” Speaker Mike Johnson said at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday.
