Sponsors (2)
The bill trades a smaller, more tightly capped federal workforce and clearer OMB staffing limits to reduce payroll costs and limit outsourcing against higher workloads, degraded public services, weakened employee protections, and transitional knowledge and administrative risks.
Taxpayers: Federal personnel spending is likely to fall if the executive branch workforce is reduced to 90% of its Sept 30, 2025 size beginning in FY2028, lowering long‑term payroll costs.
Agencies: OMB-issued, agency-specific maximum staffing levels by Q1 FY2026 give agencies clearer staffing limits and planning certainty for budgeting and workforce decisions.
National-security and crisis response: The President can waive caps for war, national security, or extraordinary emergencies so critical missions can be staffed during crises.
Citizens relying on federal services (including patients with chronic conditions, seniors, and rural communities): Reduced staffing levels and hiring limits are likely to degrade critical agency services and slow service delivery.
Federal employees: Mandatory cuts to reach 90% of 2025 staffing, hiring freezes, and forced separations will increase workloads, strain current staff, and harm recruitment and retention.
Communities and local economies: Reducing federal employment and limiting future hiring signals slower growth in federal jobs, harming workers and localities that depend on federal payrolls.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Mandates OMB-set agency caps to cut executive-branch FTEs to 90% of the 9/30/2025 level and imposes hiring limits and monitoring.
Official title: Reduce the size of the Federal workforce through attrition, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 29, 2025 by Ron Johnson · Last progress January 29, 2025
Requires the President (through OMB, with OPM consultation) to shrink and cap the federal civilian workforce so that starting in FY2028 total executive-branch employees do not exceed 90% of the workforce counted on September 30, 2025. Agencies must report headcounts, OMB must set agency-specific maximum staffing levels, enforce a 1-for-3 replacement hiring ratio through Sept 30, 2027, monitor compliance, and freeze hiring and remote-work approvals for agencies that exceed their caps until compliance is restored. The President can waive the cap for war, national security, or extraordinary emergencies, and the law counts positions by full-time equivalents (FTEs) and restricts replacing employees with costlier service contracts unless cost savings are shown. The law imposes reporting deadlines and ongoing agency monitoring, gives OMB enforcement tools (including quarterly notices and freezes), and creates administrative rules for counting employees and exceptions; it does not appropriate funds or change tax or benefit rules.