Some 500,000 veterans have waited more than a month to receive medical care from the Veterans Administration. Nevertheless, White House spokesperson Sean Spicer confirmed that Trump's hiring freeze will affect thousands of open positions at the VA, including positions for doctors and nurses. The nation's veterans will pay for this freeze, in prolonged illness, injury, and pain -- or worse.
Vets will pay in another way, too. Vets make up roughly one-third of the federal workforce, which means they will be disproportionately harmed by this hiring freeze. So will women and minorities, both of whom have a significant presence among federal workers -- greater than in the workforce as a whole.
4. Small Businesses and Workers All Across the Country
Contrary to what many people believe, federal employees are working in offices all across the country. The goods and services purchased by each federal worker provide jobs and growth for their local economies. Cuts in the federal workforce will therefore cause economic damage all of the states where federal jobs are located.
According to the latest report on the subject from the Office of Management and Budget, states with the largest numbers of Federal employees are: California, with 150,000 jobs; Virginia, with 143,000 jobs; Washington DC, with 133,000 jobs; and, Texas, with 130,000 jobs.
That's right: Texas.
Other states with large numbers of Federal employees include Maryland, Florida, and Georgia.
Demand for goods and services will fall with the federal workforce. So will demand for workers, which means that wages will rise more slowly (if at all). This hiring freeze will affect small businesses and working people in states like Texas and all across the country.
5. Everybody Else
The "public safety" argument could also be used to exempt employees of the Environmental Protection Agency from the hiring freeze. But Trump has nominated Scott Pruitt, a longtime foe of environmental regulation who has sided with some genuinely noxious polluters, to run the EPA.
As Oklahoma's Attorney General, Pruitt has sued the EPA 14 times. "In 13 of those cases," the New York Times reports, "the co-parties included companies that had contributed money to Mr. Pruitt or to Pruitt-affiliated political campaign committees."
In other words, Pruitt is dirty. It's unlikely he'll seek a "public safety" exemption for the inspectors that identify industrial polluters and bring them to justice. So another group that will suffer under this freeze, without getting too cute about it, is pretty much anybody who drinks water or breathes air. That covers just about everybody.
And that's just the beginning.
This is not an all-inclusive list. We've left out tourists, for example, who'll pay the price for staffing cuts at the nation's monuments and national parks. But the overall impact of Trump's hiring freeze is clear: it shows a reckless disregard for the health, safety, and well-being of the American people.
(And that's not even counting his plan to end the Affordable Care Act. Physicians Steffie Woolhandler and David Emmelstein estimate that this will result in 43,000 deaths every year. And they're not Democratic partisans or ACA apologists; they've been fighting for single-payer healthcare for years.)
Given these implications -- and the thousands of jobs affected at the VA alone -- it was surprising to read, in Politico, that "Trump's move, by itself, doesn't actually do much."
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