"House GOP this week reinstated an arcane ( 1876,) procedural rule that enables lawmakers to reach deep into the budget and slash the pay of an individual federal worker — down to a $1 — a move that threatens to upend the 130-year-old civil service. It empowers any member of Congress to offer an amendment to an appropriations bill that targets a specific government employee or program. Opponents and supporters agree that it puts agencies and the public on notice that their work is now vulnerable to the whims of elected officials -- disastrous to the federal workforce, when combined with president-elect Donald Trump’s criticism of the Washington bureaucracy, his call for a freeze on government hiring and his nomination of Cabinet secretaries who seem to be at odds with the mission of the agencies they would lead."
At www.washingtonpost.com
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