Supposed to be an oversight hearing in which members of Congress can get serious answers to serious questions about the cover-up of corruption, about the prosecution of the president's enemies.
When will it be that the members of this committee on a bipartisan basis demand answers to those questions and refuse to accept personal slander as an answer to those questions?
unidentified
Personal slander.
We have to apologize to Donald Trump for slandering him.
Personal slander.
Earlier today, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was on Capitol Hill for an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
She faced questions on the Justice Department's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, the legality of deploying the National Guard to American cities, and the recent decision to seek an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey.
You can watch the full hearing tonight starting at 9 Eastern on C-SPAN.
It's also available on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org.
All right, so tell us first about the National Federation of Federal Employees.
What's the mission?
How many members do you have?
How does it work?
unidentified
So we're America's first federal employee union since 1917.
We represent 110,000 federal workers nationwide, and we're there to collect a bargain on their half and to advocate for them for better policies, wages, benefits, things like that.
And we got folks in the Department of Defense, Forest Service, VA, Passport, HUD, Housing and Urban Development, and about 35 agencies across the country.
And your website, which is NFFE.org, it has a government shutdown center on its homepage.
What's the information that you're giving out there and the guidance that you're giving to your members?
unidentified
Sure.
Well, they have a lot of concerns about how things are going to work when a shutdown first starts.
They don't know what they're supposed to be doing.
So we give them advice as in going to work and find out if you're furloughed or not, those sorts of things.
And federal employees are about to start losing a significant amount of pay.
For most federal employees, this Friday, they're going to see a reduced paycheck, and that's the last pay that they will see until the government shutdown ends.
And so, and then they want to know how they can get involved, what they can do.
And it's a real bit of a weird time right now because this administration has shown a willingness to be putative to federal employees that are speaking publicly, even though it's their First Amendment right to do that.
So it's not like the next day that the money is paid back.
unidentified
It takes a few days.
It takes a few days.
But it's important to remember that this shutdown doesn't just impact federal employees.
There's a lot of folks, particularly people who work on federal contracts, that are in the exact same boat.
When a shutdown happens, they get furloughed.
And where there's legislation that we got done in 2019 that guarantees federal employees back pay after a shutdown for millions of contractors out there, they will never see a nickel of the pay that they lost during a shutdown.
And so that has a tremendous economic impact, you know, a cascading effect when a shutdown happens.
Federal employees, contractors, communities of all kinds.
Because there's a legislation called the Anti-Deficiency Act, and that says that the administration can't spend money that Congress has not appropriated.
And it is impossible to go through a reduction in force to lay off federal employees without incurring money.
The government has to spend money to do that.
And so they are not allowed to do it.
So, I mean, but they're threatening it anyway.
And that means they're only doing one of two things, this administration.
Either they're indicating that they're going to do something illegal, which when the president does that, it's unconstitutional because he has a duty to faithfully execute the laws of this country.
So he's either indicating that he's going to do something illegal and unconstitutional, or they're just grading federal employees.
Just really, you know, kind of being punitive, which they've shown a pattern of already, maybe to gain some bargaining power in this shutdown kind of negotiation that has to happen at some point.
Either way, it's despicable and it's certainly illegal for them to do what they're talking about doing.
No, OMB Director Vogt has said that he wants to terrorize.
He used the term terrorize federal employees.
He wants to make sure that they don't want to come to work.
Is that working?
What have you heard from your members?
unidentified
Are they terrorized?
Well, they realize that they've been treated like dirt.
I think those that maybe were most inclined to kind of be intimidated by that, a lot of people took the early, you know, early resignation that just happened at the end of this fiscal year, September 30th.
Those folks are off the book.
Now, we've got over 300,000 folks, federal workers, that are out of the federal government because of this administration.
But, you know, they're mainly disrespected.
These are folks that swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.
They take a big cut in pay in order to work for the federal government.
Federal employees make 25% less than people doing the exact same jobs in the private sector.
Don't forget, approximately one-third of federal employees are veterans.
So for this administration and the OMB director to be saying, I want these people to not come to work.
I want to terrorize these people.
That's despicable.
It's terrible for the American people because the American people need these critical services.
And when you push the best and brightest out of government, you get a worse government for the American people.
And so I don't care who you are, what side of the aisle you're on.
You should be disgusted that this administration is being punitive like that to federal employees.
I think I personally am very disappointed in Congress in not playing a bigger role, a constitutional role that they have to play to be a check on this president.
They pass the laws.
They control the purse strings.
That's Congress.
The administration implements the laws, but they have a duty to actually follow them.
And so, you know, but this particular Congress, this Republican-led Congress, has shown a willingness to kind of be a lapdog of this president.
They're not holding him accountable at all, and they're just letting him violate, violate the law six ways to Sunday.
And it's just really strange that they would, you know, abdicate their, their constitutional responsibility to this extent.
We need to see the Congress start having a backbone and holding this administration accountable.
Teresa is on the republican line in Dandridge, Tennessee.
unidentified
Good morning, good morning, um.
Obama shut the government down to pass Obamacare.
Now the Democrats have shut the government down to fund Joe Biden's extended Covet.
They use Covet as an excuse to extend the subsidies uh, to Obamacare.
It went from 12 million people to 24 million people and they're using the shutdown to force Donald Trump and Republicans who never voted for Obamacare to pay for it by extortion, by any means possible.
With a gun to our head, they are forcing the American people who never wanted Obamacare and Donald Trump to pay for it, and it most certainly does have funded abortions and health care to illegal.
So Teresa, do you have a question about yeah, I was just going to say.
Do you have a question about federal workers?
Uh, during the shutdown, anything related to our guest, Randy Irwin?
unidentified
Sure, the federal workers do.
They support funding abortion, and all right, let's take that.
We, we just want to answer the shutdown.
I mean, we represent federal workers.
Federal employees are being treated as pawns in a political fight that they have absolutely nothing to do.
There's some misnomer that a lot or most or all federal employees are Democrats.
That's not true.
The the the, the federal workforce is two million people spread throughout the country.
They look politically like the, like the American citizens at large, and so it's.
You know there's, there's animosity towards federal employees that people don't understand because they think they're all in Washington, but they're not.
They're their friends and neighbors in every corner of this country.
I just want to let you know that our city is not burning down.
I've lived here for 65 years of my life, same city Portland, and you know we have our homeless situation, just like every other city in the world.
Um, I know this isn't about the federal, um workers and everything um, but my, my thoughts go back to the Supreme Court making the decision to let the president be a criminal.
Okay, this is where our failure is in this country.
Is we let a criminal who's got 38 felonies, has had so many bankruptcies that he can't even have another bankruptcy, all right, all right, Patty.
Now, if a federal worker can't pay their rent or can't pay bills, what kind of help is there for them?
unidentified
Sure.
Well, unions have some internal programs in order to kind of, you know, short-term financial help.
There's an organization called FIAFEEA.org.
It's a nonprofit, federal employees helping federal employees that helps with that sort of thing as well.
But the problem is much bigger than the solutions can be administered.
And so, you know, for people who are having the carpet pulled out from under them financially, it's just that.
And so there's not enough answers for the problems that there are.
A lot of people are going to miss payments, you know, have food, insecurity, not be able to feed their families.
You know, we've got a lot of GS3s in the GS pay scale that goes from 1 to 15.
Threes are on the lower end of that.
They start at $32,000 a year.
That's not a lot of money.
They're very close to the poverty level as it is.
A lot of them, I've heard, that we represent, they live in their cars.
So, you know, and they, when they start losing paychecks, it becomes a real crisis very fast.
And then, of course, that spills in to the services.
A classic example is, you know, if people start missing a few paychecks, do we want air traffic controllers driving Ubers at night?
Because if you start missing paychecks and they're going to be defaulting on mortgages and payments and things like that, that's what you're going to have.
It shouldn't be like that in this country.
Congress needs to get along and pass a spending bill.
And is it kind of a progressive fee that people pay?
If you're paid less, you would pay a less percentage, or is it the same percentage?
unidentified
So, in our union, we tend to have a flat rate mainly because if you kind of try to scale it, it becomes very difficult administratively, and you have to spend a lot of money doing financial stuff instead of the bread and butter.
What we want to do is collective bargaining and advocacy and those sorts of things.
But we do have a mechanism for lower paid workers to request and often be granted a lower rate, but it's done on a case-by-case basis.
So, I don't know why Randy's union exists except for two reasons.
One, because you have locally here in New York State, you have rubber rooms and federal level, they're called temporary reassignment centers, where union members who are accused of misconduct have to show up to work and then simply log on and they can write books, run real estate companies, et cetera, et cetera.
And two, because it gives gentlemen like Randy a paycheck and he can wear a nice suit and a nice tie.
What I do want to know is specifically for federal employees: what is he doing to help out ICE agents who are being shot at, spit at, having cars go after them, people threaten them.
Well, I would respectfully disagree with most of what he said, except the tie.
I thought that, you know, I appreciate that compliment.
But, you know, hey, everybody has a right in this country to, it's our First Amendment right to have advocacy and appeal to Congress.
And so, you know, my job is to be an advocate of federal employees.
And, you know, federal employees are given a lot of flack in this country.
They're shortchanged, you know, very frequently.
A lot of lies about who they are.
You know, they've created this image of lazy government bureaucrats, things that are not true.
These are hardworking people throughout the country keeping our military ready, caring for our veterans, maintaining our homeland security, caring for all of our public lands, clean air, clean water, safe air travel, safe food, secure passports, secure borders.
Civilian federal employees provide that.
The fact that they're treated like dirt by this Congress, by this administration, somebody's got to be a voice for them.
At the same time, we are continuing to express the need for a bipartisan solution here.
And, you know, we've got a shutdown.
Speaker Johnson has tried to assert, hey, we did our job and has taken his ball and gone home, isn't even here to start to resolve the issues and get to an end of the shutdown.
And that's what we need to see.
And so, you know, I think it's important to kind of give them enough space, give our leaders enough space to get to the end.
But right now, that's not even happening.
And we're certainly not standing in the way of that.
We want to see bipartisan compromise.
We want to see the decision makers get into a room, have some meaningful negotiations, and do the work of the American people and get to the end, you know, and get a deal, get a spending bill passed for the American people, reopen government.
So some, not all federal employees can be union members.
You've got about 2 million federal employees nationwide.
About 1.2 million do have a union.
And then there's a subset of what's remaining that can be organized.
And I think we're trying to do that.
By the way, lots and lots of federal employees in a way that we've never seen in my 24 years with this union.
I've never seen federal employees that don't have a union try to organize a union as fast as they are right now.
They are coming out of the woodwork left and right, trying to organize a union because they want protections from this administration and the punitive things happening.
Anything else you want to address on that, I'd be happy to.
No, he said that civil service workers tend to oppose Republican policies.
unidentified
I think he's wrong.
Well, you know, he's look, when you're talking about 2 million people, they're not a collective entity.
There's a great deal of variation.
One thing he said is that federal employees are all in big cities or something along those lines.
He's wrong about that.
He's wrong.
He's wrong.
Now, there are hubs of federal employees in big cities, Washington, D.C.
But again, he talked about 95% in Washington.
Only less than 15% of the federal workforce is in Washington.
All the others are spread out.
And the other thing is where you do have federal employees concentrated in, say, a government building downtown or something like that in a lot of cities.
There's also a huge military presence that was either by its nature in remote areas like national forests, parks, things like that, or our defense infrastructure, which was put out in rural areas strategically during the Cold War.
Congressionally Unappropriated Spending00:03:46
unidentified
So, you know, he's not correct that all federal employees are in city centers like that.
In Bradenton, Florida, on the line for Republicans.
Bill, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I too have to congratulate your guest for standing up for his employees, but I have a real problem when he kind of stretches a little bit by saying that the president is involved in illegal activity, breaking the law when it comes into layoffs.
He made the statement that he's going to be spending more money than Congress appropriated, which would be illegal.
However, I've never been involved in a layoff that eventually costs more than what you're saving by no longer employing employees.
I think I'm going to understand how he's made that statement.
Let me let Randy clarify what you meant by the costs.
unidentified
It's not about will it save more or less.
It's that Congress has not appropriated any money, appropriated any money, and the administration is saying that they're going to take action and spend money that they haven't been appropriated yet.
So it's not that it'll save money more or less.
It's that they can't spend a nickel to do it.
And this administration is saying they are going to blatantly violate that law.
And so I'm not trying to go after this administration unduly.
They're saying they're going to break the Anti-Deficiency Act.
That it's the cost of laying off the process of laying off people.
Yeah.
unidentified
I guess my understanding is that the Congress appropriates money based on the cost of a particular department, including labor costs and whatever.
So if the labor cost at the end of the year is less than what the Congress appropriated, I don't understand how you can nitpick as to how that savings was generated.
I think that's still kind of disingenuous, to be honest with you.
Right now, we're in a shutdown.
There is no money appropriated.
And so the only thing going on are 100% essential services.
By the way, pretty much all federal employees are essential.
Okay, so this whole notion of essential versus non-essential really only applies in a government shutdown.
They don't even use those terms anymore, but this administration's bringing them back to make it seem like some federal employees are kind of not essential when all of them are essential to the work that is being done in this government.
That's Randy Irwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees.
They're on the web at nffe.org.
Thanks so much for joining us.
unidentified
Thank you for having me.
And past president.
Why are you doing this?
This is outrageous.
This is a kangaroo court.
Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity.
Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins.
Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue.
Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides.
Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Lawmakers introduced new bipartisan legislation commemorating the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel.
Come On Up00:00:23
unidentified
The legislation directs the U.S. Holocaust Museum to develop a curriculum to teach children about the events of October 7th, with the goal of combating anti-Semitism across the country.