Federal Insider: Anxiety, fear, uncertainty mark federal employees awaiting Trump's budget

Take a heap of anxiety, add a chunk of fear, throw in big pile of uncertainty.

Mix and boil for a federal employee moral-busting stew, with a bad aftertaste.

The main ingredient — the budget plan President Trump presents this week — is sure to be the most distasteful.

His expected proposal to cut $54 billion from the domestic discretionary budget worries feds about their agencies’ missions, their health-care benefits, retirement plans and even their jobs.

That was clear from conversations with federal employees and retirees attending the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE) and the Federal Managers Association conferences this week, which co-located their meetings at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center.

“Obviously, that’s distressful,” said NARFE President Richard G. Thissen of the impact the current political climate has on his members, about 23,500 of whom are current employees. “There’s a great deal of angst among the federal employee workforce … it’s kind of like what shoe is going to drop on us next. … They are nervous. … Even the retirees understand this is really an attack.”

The feeling of being attacked goes beyond dollars and cents. It includes Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington. That’s clearly a morale-busting slogan for proud, mission-driven employees who reject the notion that they are swamp-dwellers.

If Trump calls for a 1.9 percent pay increase to take effect in January 2018, as an Office of Management and Budget document suggested, that might slow the morale slide. Some anxieties, however, can’t be helped with more money. That same OMB guidance to the Commerce Department, reported by The Washington Post earlier this month, said the agency should “prepare plans and calculate estimates on how it will reduce personnel” consistent with an 18 percent budget cut.

Language like this gives feds good reason to fear layoffs, in addition to the current hiring freeze.

“Everybody at this conference has at least one employee who lives paycheck-to-paycheck,” said Patricia Niehaus, a civilian Air Force manager and past president of the managers’ association. An increase in health-insurance premiums, she added, could result in the inability of some families to pay for after-school programs.

Thissen said current and retired workers also are disturbed that efforts to cut workplace due-process protections for those facing disciplinary actions are part of “changing the fabric of the federal workforce” and fuel talk about a return to the spoils system.