As the federal government appeared headed for a shutdown early last week, Jenna Norton joined a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol to urge lawmakers not to be cowed by the Trump administration’s threat of mass layoffs.
“As a federal worker, I am here to tell you that every awful thing that would happen in a shutdown — shuttering programs that Americans rely on, damaging our economy, firing federal workers — all of this is already happening,” said Norton, a program director with the National Institutes of Health, who spoke in her personal capacity alongside other civil servants.
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Now furloughed, Norton continues to implore members of Congress to reject a spending deal that maintains the status quo. Instead, she hopes they’ll use the moment to assert their constitutional authority — their power of the purse — to take back control of government spending.
“They accepted a position of power and privilege of representing the American people,” Norton said in an interview with NPR. “If they’re serious about doing that, they need to stand up and represent the American people and push back against a president who wants to be king.”
None of them should be. The Republican budget is to literally to continue the layoffs that theyve been doing since January and are wildly unpopular. Everyone with more than two weeks of foresight can see that whatever worries we might have about a shutdown are nothing compared to the damage that giving Republicans another OK would do.
Agreed, no one should care about their threats; they already did mass layoffs when the government wasn’t shut down so if they’re going to lay people off, they’re going to do it regardless of the current status.