Democrat presses Comer to have Vought testify on federal firings

A Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is pressing Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to call President Trump’s budget director before the panel to explain his threat to escalate federal firings amid the government shutdown. 

In a letter sent to Comer on Thursday, Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) portrayed Russell Vought, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as a partisan ideologue who’s waged a war against federal workers all year and is now using the shutdown as a pretext to expand the purge. 

Those moves are patently illegal, according to Walkinshaw, whose Northern Virginia district is home to almost 60,000 federal workers. He wants Vought to testify before Oversight to answer for the threat of mass firings, in lieu of the furloughs that have historically accompanied federal shutdowns.

“Director Vought has already unleashed significant disruption across the federal government through his role in orchestrating the DOGE chaos, his deferred resignation scheme, and the implementation of unnecessary reductions in force,” Walkinshaw wrote to Comer. 

“Now, he has escalated further by illegally threatening mass firings of federal employees, actions that would directly violate the Antideficiency Act and undermine the continuity of government operations.”

A spokesperson for the Oversight Committee wasted no time shooting down the idea of bringing Vought before the panel.

“Democrats shouldn’t need a hearing to understand that their shutdown isn’t good for federal employees or the American people,” the spokesperson said in an email. “They have the ability to end this shutdown, and the job cuts conversation, by supporting the clean funding proposal already approved by the House.”

Last week, Vought issued a memo directing federal agencies to prepare for mass firings if the government were to close its doors. On Wednesday, the first day of the shutdown, Vought advanced the effort, staging a call with congressional Republicans on which he said a round of layoffs would be coming before week’s end. The number of affected workers is “likely going to be in the thousands,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday.

The threats have been widely viewed as an effort to pressure Senate Democrats into dropping their opposition to the Republicans’ spending bill for the sake of reopening the government. Democrats have so far resisted that pressure, arguing that the Trump administration has been firing federal workers all year, and will likely continue to do so — with or without a shutdown. 

The firings, if and when they materialize, would mark a sharp departure from traditional protocols during government shutdowns, when federal workers are temporarily furloughed, but not let go altogether. Typically, they have received back pay when Congress reaches a deal and the government reopens. 

Walkinshaw has said any new firings rationalized by the shutdown will likely be contested in the courts, and he’s predicting the administration will lose the case. That’s because the Antideficiency Act, which bars federal agencies from spending more than Congress allocates to them, would be violated, he says, if Vought pursues mass firings during a shutdown, when federal funds are largely frozen. 

In an MSNBC op-ed published on Tuesday, Walkinshaw explained the legal nuances in further detail.

“Attempting to implement ‘mass firings,’ as Vought said, during a shutdown would create new administrative burdens, legal liabilities, severance obligations and significant compensation or benefits questions,” he wrote. “That is exactly the kind of commitment to future expenditures that the Antideficiency Act bars when money is unavailable.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Thursday argued that Vought, as OMB director, has ample powers to fire workers and slash spending as he chooses during a shutdown. 

“The White House, the executive branch, take no pleasure in this. But when they are tasked with determining what their priorities are, obviously they're going to follow their principles and priorities and not the other team,” Johnson told reporters in the Capitol.

The Speaker said Vought is firing federal employees and slashing federal spending only “reluctantly” after Democrats forced the shutdown. 

“He takes no pleasure in this,” he said.

Trump, however, appears to be relishing the sport of using the shutdown to pursue cuts targeting the initiatives championed by Democrats. In a social media post on Thursday, the president said he would meet with Vought later in the day to decide which “Democratic Agencies” will be cut — “and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.” 

“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” he posted on his Truth Social account. 

Statements like those have triggered the Democratic accusations that the administration is using the shutdown to advance a long-held goal of gutting the federal government, even if the moves skirt the law.

Walkinshaw, for one, wants the opportunity to press Vought on that campaign directly from his perch on the Oversight Committee. 

“If Director Vought has time to join partisan conference calls with Republican Members of  Congress, then he has time to present his plans openly and under oath to Congress and the American people,” he wrote to Comer. “Oversight of these unprecedented and destabilizing actions is not optional; it is our constitutional duty.”