Kaine, Connolly, and Colleagues Reintroduce Bipartisan Legislation to Protect the Civil Service from Politicization
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and U.S. Representatives Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA-11), Kweisi Mfume (D-MD-07), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA-01), and Don Bacon (R-NE-02) reintroduced the Saving the Civil Service Act. The bipartisan legislation would protect the federal workforce from politicization and political manipulation.
“Every day, our nation’s federal employees go to work for the American people to administer Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ benefits, protect our national security, and provide other critical services to communities across our country,” said Kaine. “We must ensure our federal workers continue to be hired based on their expertise and experience, not their political party. I’m concerned by the President-elect’s proposed plans to target the federal workforce, and I will keep working with my colleagues to pass this legislation to protect the merit-based federal civil service system.”
“The civil servants who make up our federal workforce are the engine that keeps our federal government running,” said Connolly. “They are our country’s greatest asset. We rely on their experience and expertise to provide every basic government service—from delivering the mail to helping families in the wake of natural disasters. The President-elect’s promise to remove qualified experts and replace them with political loyalists is a direct threat to our national security and our government’s ability to function the way the American people expect it to. It threatens to create a system wherein benefits and services are delivered based on the politics, not the needs, of the recipient. Expertise, not political fealty, must define our civil service.”
On October 21, 2020, President Trump signed Executive Order 13957 creating Schedule F in the excepted service. This executive order would undermine the merit system principles of our federal workforce by requiring agency heads to reclassify “policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” positions to a newly created Schedule F category of federal employees that removes their due process rights and civil service protections.
The Saving the Civil Service Act would ensure the civil service system cannot be politically manipulated by:
- Preventing any position in the federal competitive service created after September 30, 2020, from being reclassified outside of merit system principles without the express consent of Congress.
- Installing a cap on the number of conversions to the frozen excepted service schedule (Schedule C). The cap cannot exceed more than 1% of the total number of employees at such agency as of the first day of such term, or five employees, whichever is greater.
- Requiring that anyone who is converted provide consent for that conversion, and a report to Congress on any conversions.
The Saving the Civil Service Act is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Ed Markey (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Patty Murray (D-WA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Angus King (I-ME), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Brian Schatz (D-HI), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), John Fetterman (D-PA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD).
The Saving the Civil Service Act is endorsed by the following organizations: The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Federal Managers Association (FMA), the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), and the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).
Text of the Saving the Civil Service Act is available here.
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