Last-ditch effort to block Schedule F’s return thwarted by Senate Republicans

Senate Democrats made a final and ultimately futile gambit Tuesday to advance legislation to insulate the federal workforce from President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to reinstate Schedule F and strip tens of thousands of employees of their civil service protections.

Led by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a group of lawmakers sought unanimous consent on the Senate floor to pass Kaine’s Saving the Civil Service Act (S. 399), a bill that would require the president to seek approval from Congress before instituting any new job categories within the federal civil service. It also sets up new restrictions on how jobs can be reclassified within the current system.

In the waning months of his first term, then-President Trump signed an executive order establishing Schedule F, a new job category for “policy-related” positions. Employees occupying those jobs would be reclassified out of the competitive service into Schedule F, stripping them of their civil service protections and making them effectively at-will employees. competitive hiring rules also would no longer apply to these positions.

Trump has vowed to revive the proposal upon his inauguration, and conservative think tanks have already reportedly identified 50,000 federal workers to target with the new authority and threaten with termination.

Under Kaine’s bill’s provisions, jobs currently held by a federal employee could not be reclassified into Schedule C, the government’s main cadre of political appointees, without approval from the director of the Office of Personnel Management. Agencies also would be limited to reclassifying 1% of their workforces over the course of a four-year term, and agencies would have to obtain the consent of federal workers occupying a position before they could reclassify it to another job schedule.

At a press conference before heading to the Senate floor, Kaine warned that Schedule F would mark a return of the spoils system of the 19th century, whose excesses led to the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 by a supporter disgruntled that he was not hired into the government.

“It took about 100 years for our country to realize that merit employment is better than the previous spoils system that just rewarded loyalty,” Kaine said. “All Americans, whatever their political inclination, rely on our federal employees. We know from past experience and from commitments made by the incoming president that he would dramatically change the federal workforce and make it a loyalty-based system. That would impede the work of the federal government, expose people to intimidation, and bring people into jobs that are not qualified to do them, thus risking the American public’s safety and quality of life.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., vowed to continue to fight to protect the workforce from politicization, aware of the long odds associated with the unanimous consent request.

“We’re going to keep pushing for this, whether it gets through today or whether or not we go into next year, we’ll keep fighting to protect the merit-based civil service system,” he said. “I can assure you that we will use every legislative and legal strategy available to us to protect that merit-based system and not allow it to be replaced by political cronyism.”

Opposing Kaine’s request on the Senate floor was Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., who said the motion amounted to an effort to prevent the president-elect from following through on campaign promises to voters.

“What we have seen, particularly in the last 100 years, is the growth of an administrative state that isn’t accountable to anyone,” he said. “I was in northwest Missouri and a farmer told me, ‘I don’t remember voting for the deputy undersecretary of the EPA,’ and yet that person’s guidance letter—not a rule or a law—can destroy a farmer’s livelihood.”

While the “deputy undersecretary” is not a position at the Environmental Protection Agency, the deputy administrator is, and it is a Senate-confirmed political appointment, not a career federal employee.

Kaine told reporters that while his effort Tuesday may have been unsuccessful, he believes support for his legislation will grow on a bipartisan basis in the months to come.

“The Vegas odds of getting this off the floor are not massive, but we’re setting the groundwork for continuing this battle,” he said. “It might look like a challenge, but I have a feeling that in some instances, the American public will see this corruption seeping in right away, and Republicans—when they see this Pandora’s Box open—we’ll gain some votes because of the bad behavior enabled by going down the path of a spoils system.”