A plan by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to shed more federal workers by using the government shutdown as cover is falling apart as department heads are ignoring his proposed cuts.


According to a report from Politico, a leaked document reveals that Vought, who has made it his life’s mission to pare down government functions to a bare minimum, pressed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to do a mass layoff with a target of close to 8,000 jobs eliminated and they have yet to come close.

Politico’s Erin Schumaker, Tim Röhn and Carmen Paun are reporting that Vought's attempt to purge the government of employees seems to be following the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) playbook with similar results of a mass firing and then rehiring within days.

“POLITICO obtained an HHS document from late September, the shutdown’s eve, that said the department wanted to cut nearly 8,000 jobs, based on guidance from Vought’s budget office. On Oct. 10, HHS only went ahead with 1,760. In the two weeks since, the number has dwindled to 954, as the department has rescinded nearly half of the total, blaming a coding error,” the report states.

Adding that the purge was “largely scuttled by top agency officials who intervened before the cuts could be made,” the report added, “the National Institutes of Health was to take the hardest hit among HHS agencies, 4,545 layoffs, or roughly a quarter of its workforce. It ended up firing no one.”

Politico is also reporting that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s boast about his downsizing falls apart when looking at the numbers.“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he had downsized his department’s staff to 62,000 from 82,000 when he took office. He’s nowhere close. An HHS contingency plan produced in advance of the shutdown said the department still employed 79,717. Employees who took a Sept. 30 buyout offer from Musk would bring that lower, though the number who did is unknown because the White House has not released agency-by-agency totals and has stopped publishing agency employment updates,” the report states.


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