'Wrecking ball': Fired PA Trump voter says job cuts are 'destroying' lives 'for no reason'
Some of the federal workers caught up in the Trump administration’s widespread firings were Trump supporters. One of those workers, Robert McCabe, told NBC10 on Thursday that the president was destroying lives.
McCabe was one of 7,000 probationary workers who can expect to be laid off at the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Associated Press. Federal employees have also been laid off at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Education Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and elsewhere.
He “said he had been a supporter of President Trump prior to the layoff,” NBC10 reported.
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“You know when he talks about government waste and all that, yes, I’m behind it,” McCabe said. “I believe there is a lot of stuff in the government that needs fixing. And that’s part of the reason why I actually wanted to work for the government, actually. To help change. Help change the things that are wrong in the world, you know?”
McCabe said he thought the cuts would look different.
“I thought that someone with his business acumen would have come in with a fine-tooth comb and actually found it instead of coming in with a wrecking ball and destroying people’s lives for no reason.”
He was one of 250 - 300 IRS workers laid off in Philadelphia Thursday.
“The letters are willfully incorrect and to our belief in NTEU unlawful," said Alex Jay Berman, the executive vice president of the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 71 in Philadelphia. "They say essentially 'your ability, skills and performance do not make you a fit for federal employment. In addition, your performance is not up to par.' This is patently untrue. These are being all issued with the exact same wording to every single one of these probationary employees, whether they have just gotten out of training and had no performance metrics. Whether they have been here for almost their entire year and had very good performance appraisals.”
“The planned layoffs at the IRS would largely target workers at the 95,000-person agency who were hired as part of an expansion under former Democratic President Joe Biden, who had sought to expand enforcement efforts on wealthy taxpayers,” Reuters reported. “Trump's Republicans have blasted that effort, saying without evidence that middle-class Americans and small business owners would be the ones hardest hit.”
The fired workers include those working on making sure taxpayers follow the tax code, file returns, and pay taxes.
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