Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a speech during a campaign event, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016, in Gettysburg, Pa. AP Photo/ Evan Vucci
Trump Pledges Governmentwide Hiring Freeze
The proposal would be implemented on his first day in office, Trump said in a speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Donald Trump on Saturday promised his administration would implement a hiring freeze across the federal government if he is elected.
Trump announced the plan in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as part of his “contract for the American voter.” He said the hiring freeze would be one of the top priorities he would seek to accomplish in his first day in office.
The Republican presidential nominee said his plan would “reduce [the] federal workforce through attrition.” He would make exceptions for jobs in the military, public safety and public health.
Trump did not offer details about his proposal, but it appears to go further than what the Republican Party has previously endorsed through its budget blueprints. GOP spending plans have for years called for federal agencies to reduce non-national security employees by 10 percent by filling just one out of every three vacancies created by workers leaving federal service.
The hiring freeze is part of Trump’s six-point plan to “clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, D.C.” The plan also includes a requirement for agencies to eliminate two regulations for every new one issued, as well as the ethics rules for federal employees he rolled out last week.
Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, has called federal employees the “backbone of our country’s government” and “part of the fabric of American life.”
For a full analysis of how Trump would manage federal agencies and their employees, click here.