title:  House Republicans Give Themselves The Power To Slash Pay Of Federal Workers They Don’t Like To $1
text: It s only been a couple days since Republicans received massive backlash for trying to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics. Not they are doing something just as despicable.Republicans hate federal workers and Donald Trump s team has been leading a witch hunt demanding names of federal workers who work on climate change and LGBT issues. Clearly, they have something sinister in mind by specifically targeting those federal employees.And under the cover of the uproar over Republican efforts to kill the ethics panel, Republicans passed a rule known as the Holman Rule that gives Republicans the power to target specific individual federal workers and programs.According to the Washington Post,The rule changes the process of passing spending bills by allowing any rank-and-file House member to propose an amendment that would cut a specific federal program or the jobs of specific federal employees, by slashing their salaries or eliminating their positions altogether.Before this rule change, an agency s budget could be cut broadly, but a specific program, employee or groups of employees could not be targeted because of civil service protections.For example, Republicans could use the rule to cut a specific federal worker s pay down to a $1. Yeah, you read that right. One whole dollar.So let s say Republicans find out that a certain federal worker in the Energy Department in studying the effects of climate change. They could persecute that person by cutting their pay to force them to stop doing their job. Or they could cut the pay of a federal land management employee as punishment for protecting public lands from hooligans like the Bundy brothers.It s an absolutely terrifying rule that makes it incredibly clear that Republicans intend to destroy anyone who doesn t agree with them. This is tyranny, pure and simple.Maureen Gilman, who represents 150 federal employees as legislative director for the National Treasury Employees Union, is very concerned. This is part of a very chilling theme that federal workers are seeing right now,  Gilman told the Washington Post.House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer criticized the rule on Tuesday as  shortsighted and ideologically driven changes to our civil service  in step with Republican efforts to use federal employees as scapegoats.Rep. H. Morgan Griffith is the Republican who revived the rule and his opinion on the rule is even more frightening because he compared it to using a sniper rifle against the federal government and admitted that Republicans could use the law to send thousands of federal employees to the unemployment line.He favors a strategic application of the law, likening it to a bullet from a sniper rifle rather than a shotgun. It s unlikely   but not impossible   that members will  go crazy  and cut huge swaths of the workforce, he said. I can t tell you it won t happen,  he said in an interview in his office.  The power is there. But isn t that appropriate?This is yet another outrageous rule Republicans are using to attack the government they despise. It s a way for them to launch personal vendettas and get revenge and anybody who doesn t agree with their extremist ideology is in danger of losing their livelihood. It s an attack that should enrage the American people.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images