The ‘big, beautiful bill' would secretly dismantle the civil service

The Hill

2 days ago

The House-passed budget reconciliation bill contains a troubling provision so dangerous and corrosive to the integrity of the federal government that it demands immediate scrutiny and swift rejection by the Senate.
Buried in more than 1,000 pages of legislative text is Section 90002, a provision that strikes at the heart of the professional, nonpartisan civil service. It proposes a 9.4 percent salary surcharge on newly hired federal employees who wish to retain their civil service protections, ostensibly to pay for their retirement benefits.
Those who cannot afford this effective tax on the rights that federal employees currently enjoy would be forced into permanent at-will employment. Although they would then qualify for a lower retirement deduction of 4.4 percent, as purely at-will employees they could be fired at any time, for any reason — or for no reason at all — with no legal recourse.
This is not just bad policy — it is a direct attack on more than 140 years of bipartisan civil service tradition.
Our professional civil service was born out of the rampant corruption of the 19th-century 'spoils system,' in which federal jobs were handed out as political favors by victorious candidates. That system came to a halt with the Pendleton Act of 1883, passed after President James Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled office-seeker who believed he had been improperly denied a patronage job. The Pendleton Act established a competitive, merit-based hiring system and laid the foundation for the modern professional civil service that serves the nation — not the party in power.
This commitment was reaffirmed and modernized by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, signed by President Jimmy Carter. That law improved efficiency and accountability and codified labor rights while protecting employees from arbitrary or politically motivated firings. It also created federal bodies — the Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Merit Systems Protection Board — to safeguard merit principles and the integrity of public service.
Now, with a single provision rolled out with little debate and no hearing record, the House reconciliation bill threatens to undo all this hard-won progress. If enacted, it would create a two-tier federal workforce: one class protected by civil service laws, and another completely vulnerable to the whims of political appointees. Worse still, the measure is designed to coerce new hires into giving up their rights for the rest of their careers.
Faced with a 9.4 percent pay cut, most new federal employees — already earning salaries that are an estimated 25 percent lower than their private-sector counterparts — will feel they have no real choice. Many early-career workers live paycheck to paycheck; this surcharge would be an impossible burden. According to the Congressional Budget Office, three-quarters of new hires would likely be driven into at-will status. Among the 800,000 federal workers I represent as president of the American Federation of Government Employees, few if any could afford to pay the surcharge.
That inability to pay is one reason why the provision raises so little money — less than $500 million annually according to the CBO — or just 0.1 percent of the cost of the bill's accompanying tax cuts.
Clearly, revenue is not the point. The point is to erode labor rights and weaken the civil service.
This provision is also a political time bomb. If passed, it sets a precedent that could be exploited by any future administration. Imagine a newly inaugurated Democratic president firing every at-will federal employee hired during the previous Republican administration — no hearings, no cause, no appeal. If Republicans are willing to set this precedent, they must be prepared to live under it.
But the real danger is institutional. How can federal scientists, doctors, safety inspectors or law enforcement officers operate with independence and integrity if they can be dismissed on a whim? These protections are what enable civil servants to speak truth to power — even when that truth is inconvenient.
This proposal is also a direct attack on organized labor. Without civil service protections, unions are hamstrung in their ability to represent their members. Workers afraid of being summarily fired are unlikely to file grievances, assert their rights or even speak candidly in meetings. Only those who can afford the surcharge would retain access to effective representation. Section 90002 isn't just misguided — it's union-busting by design.
Imagine the outcry if a Democratic Congress imposed a 5 percent income tax on corporations to preserve their rights to challenge unions under the National Labor Relations Act. Republicans would rightly decry this as the weaponization of tax policy. Yet that's precisely what this bill does to federal workers — using financial coercion to undermine their legal protections.
The civil service exists to provide stability, expertise and continuity regardless of the party holding office. It is one of the bedrock institutions that has sustained American democracy through wars, crises and peaceful transitions of power. The Trump administration may not like the idea of a government that can resist political manipulation — but that is exactly what democracy requires.
Section 90002 is not reform. It is sabotage. Congress must reject it and reaffirm its commitment to the principles that have guided our civil service since 1883. Our institutions — and the American people they serve — deserve no less.
Dr. Everett B. Kelley is national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO.