EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin expects to cut most of that agency’s staff, President Donald Trump said Wednesday as he and his administration plow ahead with dramatic reductions to the federal workforce.
Zeldin “thinks he’s going to be cutting 65 or so percent of the people from environmental,” Trump said Wednesday at the White House as he convened his first Cabinet meeting.
Elon Musk spoke at that gathering Wednesday where he promoted the work his so-called Department of Government Efficiency has done so far to slash federal spending at agencies across the government. Trump at the meeting criticized the federal workforce for being “bloated” and “sloppy.”
A 65 percent staff reduction at EPA would mark a drastic downsizing for the agency of about 15,000 employees across the country. Cutting EPA’s staff to around 5,000 employees would put the agency close to the numbers it had when it was created by President Richard Nixon.
EPA started with about 4,000 employees in 1970. But in recent years, the staff has hovered between 14,000 and 18,000 employees.
Myron Ebell, who led the Trump administration’s EPA transition team in 2016, hoped to shrink the agency to about 5,000 people during Trump’s first term, but Congress largely rejected steep cuts to the agency.
EPA is just one of many agencies across the government that’s poised to see dramatic workforce cuts in the coming weeks and months.
The Trump administration Wednesday sent guidance to agency heads as they proceed with “large-scale reductions in force.”
The White House budget office and the Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to federal agency leaders directing them on how to comply with his demands for workforce cuts and agency reorganization plans. The memo also lays out time frames for cuts.
The Trump administration is directing each agency to submit its initial plans for staff cuts and reorganization plans no later than March 13.
That first phase, the memo says, should aim to increase productivity, achieve a “significant reduction in the number” of full-time positions, reduce the federal property footprint and slash spending.
The administration is also directing agencies to submit a second plan for cuts and reorganization by April 14. Agencies should aim to have those plans in place by Sept. 30, the memo says.
Those plans should include confirmation that agencies’ have reviewed personnel data including recent performance ratings and any “proposed relocations of agency bureaus and offices from Washington, D.C. and the National Capital Region to less-costly parts of the country,” the memo says.
Trump said Wednesday that Musk wants to do another round of an email that asked federal employees to summarize what they had done the previous week. The request over the weekend sparked confusion and frustration among workers unsure how or whether to respond.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Trump said. “You got a lot of people that have not responded. So we’re trying to figure out, do they exist? Who are they? And it’s possible that a lot of those people will be actually fired. And if that happened, that’s OK, because that’s what we’re trying to do. This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run.”
