Home Media Center News Releases

WASHINGTON – New details from the White House plan to gut agency budgets next year further proves that the administration’s goal is not efficiency but ruining the federal government’s ability to provide basic human services that Congress authorized on behalf of the American people.

The President’s proposal is to purge $163 billion from the federal budget, a shocking one-year cut to discretionary spending that would spark mass layoffs and eliminate countless programs that impact public health, the economy and our overall safety and security.

“Don’t be fooled by promises of deficit reduction and eliminating waste: This is an effort to destroy government,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald. “If a White House budget is a statement of the president’s priorities, this one’s priority is to tear it all down.”

The cuts outlined in the White House proposal include a $33 billion reduction to the Department of Health and Human Services, $5 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency, $2.5 billion from the IRS, $1 billion from the National Park Service, and no pay increase for federal employees, among others.

“NTEU members around the country will be paying close attention as the 2026 budget debate now goes to Congress, which has the final say on agency spending levels and federal pay and benefits,” Greenwald said. “Frontline federal employees are dedicated public servants who simply want the tools and resources they need to do their jobs and help their agencies accomplish their valuable public service missions, such as collecting taxes, keeping our national parks safe for visitors, protecting consumers from fraud, stopping harmful pollution, conducting life-saving medical research, and so on.”

The White House plan would turn the clock back for the IRS to its lowest funding level since 2002, eliminating up to 19,000 jobs and slashing the enforcement budget by one-third, even as Congress contemplates changes to the tax code and adding new responsibilities to the agency’s workload. Notably, the cuts would fall hardest on the personnel and resources needed to audit the returns of high-net-worth individuals, complex corporations and anyone who may be trying to avoid paying what they owe.

“The IRS workforce is already in turmoil worrying about additional layoffs, and this budget proposal threatens to return to the agency to the days of excessive backlogs, slower processing of tax returns, reduced customer service, fewer taxes collected and increasing deficits,” Greenwald said.

The proposed cut to the EPA represents more than half of the total agency budget and would return the agency to staffing levels not seen since the 1980s. Other NTEU-represented agencies include the Bureau of Land Management, with a cut of $1.6 billion, and the Department of Energy would lose $3.5 billion.

NTEU has endorsed the Federal Adjustment of Incomes Rates Act, which would provide federal employees an average 4.3 percent pay increase in 2026.

  NTEU represents employees in 37 federal agencies and offices.