Shutdown threat escalates as White House warns of job losses

WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump’s administration has raised the stakes in a showdown with U.S. Senate Democrats over a looming partial government shutdown, threatening to permanently remove workers from some federal agencies if funding runs out next Tuesday.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget — which has played a key role in Trump’s campaign to sharply scale back the size of the federal government — in a late Wednesday memo asked agencies to identify programs, projects and activities where discretionary funding will lapse on October 1 if Congress does not pass legislation to keep the federal government open.

“Programs that did not benefit from an infusion of mandatory appropriations will bear the brunt of a shutdown,” the OMB said in the memo, which the White House pr