President Trump's Federal Hiring Freeze Will Cost Taxpayers and Hurt Americans

Donald Trump is backtracking on campaign pledges to create American jobs and cut wasteful government spending by issuing an executive order to freeze federal employee hiring across the country,

The order will result in more work being outsourced to more expensive contractors, the American Federation of Government Employees said today.

"President Trump's action will disrupt government programs and services that benefit everyone and actually increase taxpayer costs by forcing agencies to hire more expensive contractors to do work that civilian government employees are already doing for far less," AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said.

President Trump's order to freeze federal employee hiring "will disrupt government programs and services that benefit everyone and actually increase taxpayer costs by forcing agencies to hire more expensive contractors to do work that civilian government employees are already doing for far less," says J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees. AFGE represents 670,000 federal and D.C. government workers nationwide.

More than 85 percent of federal employees live and work outside the nation's capital, so a hiring freeze targeting civilian workers will be felt in cities and towns across the country.

The number of federal employees has been frozen at about 2 million for the past 50 years, since John F. Kennedy was president. Meanwhile the number of contractors employed by the government has grown to at least twice the number of full-time federal employees, and trillions of dollars have been wasted on service contracts and mismanaged weapons systems.

"Numerous studies have shown that contractors are two to three times more costly than each federal employee they replace," Cox said. "President Trump's federal hiring freeze will result in more government waste as agencies are forced to hire high-priced contractors to do the work that federal employees can and should be doing."

President Trump's executive order excludes employees working on national security and defense issues, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of the current federal workforce. That means the hiring freeze will disproportionately affect domestic agencies and programs, many of which have already endured severe budget cuts this decade.

"This hiring freeze will mean longer lines at Social Security offices, fewer workplace safety inspections, less oversight of environmental polluters, and greater risk to our nation's food supply and clean water systems," Cox said.

"All Americans should be outraged that President Trump is gutting federal programs and funneling their taxpayer dollars into the hands of less-regulated private companies who answer to their corporate shareholders and not the American people," Cox said.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 670,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia.