The president also told reporters on Sunday that it’s up to Democrats whether layoffs begin or the government is reopened.
A top White House economy official, Kevin Hassett, said Sunday that layoffs to the federal workforce could occur quickly if negotiations with Democrats to reopen the government don’t lead to any progress.
Hassett, who is the head of the National Economic Council, said that the administration and Republicans will negotiate their position to end the government shutdown but said he hopes Democrats come to a compromise soon. If not, the layoffs will start, he said.
“I think that if the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere, then there will start to be layoffs,” Hassett told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
“But I think that everybody’s still hopeful that when we get a fresh start at the beginning of the week that we can get the Democrats to see that it’s just common sense to avoid layoffs like that, to avoid the $15 billion a week that the Council of Economic Advisers says will harm GDP if we have a shutdown” as well as other financial losses that are incurred as it continues, he added.
Hassett said that the White House believes that Democrats will “be reasonable once they get back into town on Monday, and if they are, then I think there’s no reason for those layoffs.”
Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that federal layoffs, or reduction-in-force plans, are coming “very soon,” while Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought also said that the administration is looking at the government shutdown as a means to reduce the size of the federal government and workforce.
Starting in the early morning of Oct. 1, federal agencies ordered hundreds of thousands of federal employees who are not essential to protecting people and property to stop work.
Democrats are blaming Trump and the Republican members of Congress for the shutdown.
