Health and Human Services employees were offered voluntary purchases to give up their work on Friday night, according to a person who received email and an administration official.
The approximately 80,000 agency employees received an email without signing Friday night, offering them a “payment of voluntary separation incentives”, with a deadline to respond for Friday, March 14.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
In February, during an interview about the “Ingraham Angle” of Fox News, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he had a “generic list” of employees in the department he would like to see.
“If you have been involved in a good science, you have nothing to worry about,” Kennedy said. “If you care about public health, you have nothing to worry about. If you are working there for the pharmaceutical industry, then I would say you should move and work for the pharmaceutical industry. “
The HHS supervises the services centers of Medicare and Medicaid, which provides health insurance coverage for a significant part of the population of the United States. The agency also supervises the centers for disease control and prevention, which underwent substantial cuts to its workforce last month.
Experts have warned that HHS cuts could makeotibes of Kennedy’s ability to boost their own priorities, including making changes in vaccine policies and eliminating unhealthy foods.
“Cutting staff is a challenge that Mr. Kennedy will face,” said Dorit Reiss, an vaccine policy expert at the University of California, San Francisco, after his confirmation of the Senate last month. “That challenge will be exacerbated by his lack of experience about the general functions of the department, something in which an expert staff could help him.”
The offer of health separation and human services occurs when Elon Musk and its government efficiency department work to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce through generalized dismissals, the dismantling of entire agencies and substantial cuts to federal programs and subsidies.
The measure occurs after President Donald Trump clarified at a cabinet meeting this week that agency chiefs, no Musk, are in charge of personnel decisions.
Trump, however, warned his cabinet secretaries that if they do not cut the personnel sufficiently cut in their departments, Musk would intervene.
“If they can cut, it is better. If they don’t cut, Elon will cut, ”Trump said Thursday.
The Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment Authority, also known as the Purchase Authority, allows agencies that reduce or restructure global payment employees of up to $ 25,000 as an incentive to voluntarily separate.
The Trump administration in January similarly offered approximately 2 million federal voluntary purchasing workers, an offer that the White House then said that approximately 75,000 people accepted.
Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed.
