“Although the restrictions are no longer in place, in keeping with the strategic direction established by Executive Order 13871, the OMB memorandum and ongoing Departmental organizational reviews mandated by the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2017, I expect components to scrutinize carefully all recruitment and hiring actions and undertake to recruit or hire only when such are wholly consistent with the principles, requirements and actions set forth in the OMB memorandum,” the memo said.

The memo outlined that future recruitment actions had to take into account:

• Whether the duties of the position, qualifications and skills or the organizational placement reflect mission needs

• Whether the duties can be assigned to lower organizational levels

• Whether appropriate changes to the position can be accomplished in a timely and efficient manner

Agency components are instructed to review the 2017 NDAA for direction on resources for recruitment, but also operate within the funding limits and full-time equivalent authorization set up by the president’s fiscal 2017 budget.

The Trump administration began the governmentwide hiring freeze on Jan. 23, shortly after taking office. OMB Director Mick Mulvaney said that agencies would have to submit their draft agency reform plans by June 30, with plans to implement them in September.

With the possibility of layoffs looming, federal employee unions were not impressed with the raise rumor.

“While it’s good that the White House recognizes the need to raise wages for federal employees, the 1.9 percent pay raise being proposed by the Trump administration is far below what’s called for under the law, said American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox in a statement.

“Federal employees earn less today than they did at the start of the decade when adjusted for inflation, and they deserve a more meaningful increase to make up for the more than $182 billion in cuts to their pay and benefits that have occurred since 2010.”

Trump’s proposed raise with be the second-highest since 2014 — following behind former President Obama’s 2.1 percent mark for 2017 — but the unions noted that the pay bumps have fallen far behind the rate of inflation.

“The federal workforce needs a fair raise so employees can begin to make up for years of nearly stagnant wages,” said National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon in a statement. “Federal employees provide important services to this country and we need to stop devaluing them through wages that are too low.”

Reardon said that the private sector wage growth is nearly double that of public sector jobs over the past five years, citing data from the Department of Labor’s Employment Cost Index showing private sector salaries increasing 10.4 percent compared to 5.4 percent.

“Federal employees are facing the same financial challenges as any middle-class worker and their salaries need to keep up with rising costs of health care, tuition and mortgages,” he said.

A year ago, Obama’s budget noted that federal employee pay increases had fallen behind the ECI — which measures the cost of labor — for eight consecutive years, calling it “the largest relative pay cut over an eight-year period since the passage of [Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990] by a significant margin.”

Obama had proposed a 1.6 percent pay raise in that budget, but later used an alternative pay base outlined in Title 5 statutes for “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare,” to increase the raise to 2.1 percent on Dec. 8.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., has actively sponsored legislation to increase federal salaries with his Federal Adjustment of Income Rates Act. The measure, which calls for a 3.2 percent raise in 2018, has the backing of both AFGE and NTEU and a companion bill in the Senate, but hasn’t made it out of committee yet.

“This would be the first time the government has executed cuts of this magnitude — and all at once — since the drawdown following World War II,” the story said.

Economic analysts told the Post that the projected agency layoffs would reduce employment in the Washington metro area by 1.8 percent.

Speculation over the projected cuts’ impact on the workforce has abounded since the Office of Management and Budget released topline numbers on Feb. 27, calling for a $54 billion increase in defense spending, which would be offset by $462 billion in domestic spending.

The numbers portend double-digit cuts at numerous agencies — with EPA’s budget projected to be slashed as much as 25 percent — but agencies won’t get a sense of the exact figures until the Trump administration releases its spending budget this week.

Federal employee unions have railed against the proposed cuts ever since the Feb. 27 budget disclosure and have sought to mobilize a massive grassroots effort to sway Congress to kill the spending plan.

“Cutting the size of the federal government’s civilian workforce won’t make federal programs run better, erase our national debt or save taxpayers any money,” American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox said in a statement.

“All it will do is increase our dependence on more expensive and less regulated private-sector contractors, and push more of the burden onto state and local governments that are struggling under the weight of unfunded mandates.”

The National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon said in a statement that the cuts will drastically impact the government’s ability to provide essential services.

“Reports that the new administration will propose deep and indiscriminate budget cuts across multiple federal agencies should be alarming not just to those in the civil service but to taxpayers everywhere,” he said.

“Federal workers we represent are worried about their jobs and about the ability of their agencies to carry out their missions under such austere conditions: making sure our air and water are clean; inspecting new foods and medicines; shutting down financial scams that prey on consumers; maintaining our national parks; and safeguarding nuclear materials, just to name a few.”

Reardon reiterated NTEU’s earlier call for its membership to rally Congress to reject the White House’s spending plan.

House Republicans had held a closed-door vote on Jan. 2 where members voted 119-74 to move the OCE under the House Ethics Committee in an amendment to a new House rules package.

It was expected that the move would formally be adopted on Jan. 3, rebranding the body as the Office of Congressional Complaint Review, but House Republicans dropped the measure after facing critique for the amendment.

But that doesn’t mean the OCE will remain unchanged. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., told Bloomberg that House leadership promiseda bipartisan reform package by August.

“I think people just did not want this story on opening day,” he said.

The OCE was established in March 2008 in response to the Jack Abramoff scandal and reviewed allegations of misconduct by House members and their staff.

The nonpartisan, seven-member board reviewed misconduct allegations in a number of investigations before referring them to the House Committee on Ethics.

The OCE played prominent roles in the ethics investigations of Reps. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.; Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; and former Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga.

Trump’s criticism follows that of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., whom The Washington Post reported spoke out against the amendment.

In addition to its board — which is composed of non-federal employee, bipartisan members — the OCE employees a staff of eight investigators and counsel.

Despite efforts to walk back those sentiments following a phone conversation between Trump and President Barack Obama that same day, there is speculation that after witnessing one of the better transitions in modern presidential history in 2009, the current inauguration may be one of the most contentious on record.

“It’s really hard to change direction once things start rocketing down the road they are on now,” said Don Kettl, professor and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. “It’s clear that the two teams don’t like each other much. It’s also clear that within the Trump transition team that teamwork is at a premium.

“There are a lot of dissenting views with people fighting for oxygen and fighting for access. So both the incoming Trump team’s ability to speak as a team and the ability of that team to interact with outgoing Obama people, that seems likely to get worse for a while.”

But as exhaustive research on presidential transitions by both the Partnership for Public Service and the National Academy of Public Administration have shown, there’s little time for communication breakdowns between administrations.

Starting more than a year out from the upcoming inauguration, both think tanks produced a series of research papers and roundtables with former administration officials to game-plan what a smooth transition of power would look like, in part because of the vulnerability such a transition creates for the country.

“Both the incoming and outgoing administrations must steadfastly commit to making the transfer of power not only peaceful but also effective,” Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told Federal Times in an email.

“This is a time of high vulnerability for our nation and in a post-9/11 world, the national security imperative requires the utmost cooperation and effort on both sides of the transfer to strengthen and uphold this cornerstone to our democracy,” Stier said.

Speaking at the opening of the Partnership’s Center for Presidential Transition on Jan. 20, 2016, former George W. Bush Chief of Staff Josh Bolten detailed how officials from the outgoing administration worked hand in hand with new Obama appointees to effectively navigate a credible terror threat while the inauguration was unfolding.

“The night before the inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security picked up credible threat information about an intended attack on the inauguration festivities themselves,” he said.

“[We were] trying to figure out how to best do the handoff and especially how to prepare the incoming team for a situation in which they might face a national security crisis and an attack on the homeland not just in Year One, in Hour One.”

With the legal authority of Bush’s Department of Homeland Security set to expire at noon, a potential attack could have put the new Obama administration into a crisis situation before much of the Cabinet had even moved into its offices.

By 10 a.m., Bolten had brought incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to a joint briefing, and both Homeland Security teams had gathered together in a command center to assess the nature of the threat.

“We had arranged with the Obama administration to sit side by side the day before and the day of the transition, even though the Constitution was clear on who actually makes the call to try and assist each other,” Bolten said. “The threat turned out not to be real, but the intelligence was pretty serious.

“The point of the story is that there was no template for this. We were making it up as we went along.”

While contentious presidential transitions have happened before — including a truncated timetable following Bush’s 2000 win — there hasn’t been one since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, creating a new paradigm that emphasizes the importance of cooperation.

“The world is just much more interconnected than it’s ever been,” Kettl said. “That means everything from perhaps less obvious having to do with the financial system to the obvious questions about both homeland security and international security. The risks and the costs of missteps are far higher than they have ever been before.”