Oregon’s Congressional Democrats met with hundreds of federal employees at a town hall Monday to discuss the impacts of President Trump’s directives cutting agency employees and budgets.
By ALEX BAUMHARDT/Oregon Capital Chronicle
Among the more than 300 people who attended a Portland town hall Monday for federal employees were veterans’ health care workers, climate and agricultural scientists and government technology specialists who have all lost their jobs under President Donald Trump.
Both former and current federal employees expressed frustration and anger about their futures and the country’s future with gutted agencies and a president advised by private-sector CEOs and billionaires such as Elon Musk. Many expressed feeling betrayed recently by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, who voted Friday — against the wishes of most House and Senate Democrats — to allow passage of a Republican spending bill meant to keep funding the government for the next six months.
“This is not the America I swore an oath to protect,” said Shawn McMurtrey, a military veteran and plant scientist who worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture preventing the spread of fungus in Hood River pear orchards, before he was terminated in February.
He was one of tens of thousands of probationary employees fired under Trump in February, and one of about a dozen former and current employees of federal agencies who spoke to Oregon’s congressional Democrats at the town hall hosted by U.S. Sen Ron Wyden in a federal services office building.
“I am not a waste of money. My fellow employees and veterans are not a waste of money,” he told lawmakers including Sen. Jeff Merkley and Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Maxine Dexter, Val Hoyle and Andrea Salinas, as well as Attorney General Dan Rayfield, all Democrats. The state’s final Democratic member of Congress, Rep. Janelle Bynum, who represents the 5th Congressional District, was unable to attend due to a previously scheduled engagement.
“The first thing we want to tell you is: we so wish we didn’t need to have this meeting,” Wyden told the crowd, before encouraging anyone who wished to speak but who feared retaliation to submit their testimonies to his office’s new portal for whistleblower complaints.
Oregon’s U.S. House representatives expressed pride that they joined all other House Democrats in opposing the Republican spending bill last week. Its passage has given Trump and his party almost complete control over Congressional spending for the next six months.
Neither Wyden nor Merkley said whether or not they would support Schumer as minority leader going forward, but they said there was little they could do to change his position until there is another election in two years.
“That’s a long ways into the future. Right now, what I’m really focused on is the real challenge, which in this case, is an authoritarian president who’s destroying our republic,” Merkley told reporters after the town hall. “We’re going to use all of our power to make sure that on September 30, when there is the next termination of funding, that we come out with a completely different decision than what happened last Friday.”
Republicans like Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ore., who represents much of rural eastern and southern Oregon, say the cuts are necessary to shrink government spending and eliminate national debt. Bentz was not invited to attend the town hall.
Pressing lawmakers
Belle Zaccari, a psychologist for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Salem, pressed lawmakers on what they would do today to secure protections for federal workers.
“I don’t want to hear compliments about my service,” she said. “I don’t want to hear compliments about my bravery. I don’t hear any preaching to the choir.”
Zaccari still has a job, but among her biggest concerns is the future of the U.S. Department of Education’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which forgives loans remaining after 120 qualified payments for federal student loan borrowers who take public service jobs at government agencies and nonprofits. She owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans, as do many of her colleagues.
“I want to know what you’re doing to protect the PSLF. I want to know what you’re doing to stop these bogus, unqualified Cabinet appointments that keep going through. I want to know what you’re doing today to stop DOGE, to get Elon Musk out of our affairs, and I want to know what all of your five bullets from last week were,” she said to raucous applause.
In February, in an effort led by Musk, federal employees received an email from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management demanding they send a bulleted list of five accomplishments from the previous week or risk being terminated. The email demands were lambasted by public employee unions and ultimately withdrawn.
Future of federal service
Zaccari, like many others, said if they lost their jobs it would be unlikely they’d come back to work at federal agencies in the future.
Dexter acknowledged the cuts were already “eroding trust in our federal work opportunities in a way that is going to have generational impact.”
Matt Casey, a near 30-year veteran of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a visual information specialist, said he was wondering whether to look for a new job. He has created educational installations at national parks and wildlife preserves across the West. He chose to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service over working for ad agencies and corporations years ago, he said, because he believed in the mission of public service more than the higher salary he could have commanded in the private sector.
“How will you ever get anyone to go into public service when the federal government is not a reliable employer?” he asked. “I got away from the private sector to get away from rich people who decided they could do anything they wanted.”
Casey said he was worried about whether he and other federal employees will get to keep their retirement savings and investment plan for federal employees, called the Thrift Savings Plan, and about what will be left of Social Security when he retires in a decade, whether he’ll get to keep his medical insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits program and whether the federal Department of Education will still have student loan programs so he can afford to send his kids to college without cashing out his retirement.
“At this stage I would love to stay longer,” he said of his job, “but what are the guarantees that rules will be followed?”
Legal gray areas
Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, told federal workers that his team of about nine people at the state Department of Justice have already filed or joined eight nationwide lawsuits against the Trump administration over cuts to federal agencies, and six of them have so far been successful. Rayfield is asking the Oregon Legislature to double the size of his team as it creates the next state budget.
Despite recent wins, including two brought by state attorneys general including Rayfield that were meant to reinstate fired employees, many at the town hall said they are in limbo and have no communication with superiors.
Estelle Robichaux, a climate scientist and fellow with the USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture, said she was let go as a probationary employee, then reinstated after the lawsuits, but her boss has been prohibited from communicating with her.
“To be frank, I won’t seek federal service again during this administration. And that makes me really sad, because this is something that I have worked for and aspired towards most of my adult life,” she said.
- Oregon Capital Chronicle is a nonprofit Salem-based news service that focuses its reporting on Oregon state government, politics and policy.
Shrinking government and reducing the federal deficit is never easy but it is happening. Wyden, Merkely and the other Oregon delegates have done nothing in trying to accomplish this. Even Obama has said that this is something needed.