When the staff of a tax office in Ogden, UTAH, came to work a few weeks ago to find dozens of his colleagues had been rejected by the Elon Musk cost reduction working group, they quickly called on their member of the Republican Congress.
They hoped that Blake Moore, whose district office is in the same building as the internal income services treatment center in the small town in the footsteps of the Wasatch mountain range, would be alarmed by sudden employment to the largest employer in the region.
In a county that Donald Trump won more than 20 percentage points last November, the so-called Musk Government Department of Effectiveness (DOGE) seemed to be “actively working to destroy our lives and the livelihoods of our local economy,” said IRS employee, Torrie, whose mother and grandmother also worked at the agency, and who asked that her full name is not published for fear of reprisals.
The first district of the UTAH congress, where federal employees represent at least 4% of the workforce, is not an aberrant value. Across the country, several Republican The districts were struck by the dismissals of Doge of health workers and veterans, park rangers and even meteorological services, forcing their representatives to defend unpopular cuts.
Moore, in particular, was forced to travel a fine line in response to job losses. As a deficit hawk, he had not only been a supporter of the wider efforts of Musk, but had become in December in December co -president of Doge Caucus in the House of Representatives.
In a virtual town hall last month, during which he was faced with local workers from the furious IRS against the actions of Doge, the member of the Congress conceded that he had been “frustrated” by the blind methods of the initiative.
He added that he had “worked very hard to communicate is not the right approach and that people want to be part of the solution and we should not alienate them at the moment”.
The employee representatives were not satisfied. “He came out and said he was sympathetic … and sent emails to the White House,” said Robert Lawrence, president of the local section of the National Union of Treasury Employees. “But we need more of him.”
The town halls in person in Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina and elsewhere have become so conflicting that the republican management of the Chamber advised members to hold virtual meetings instead.
Seeking to calm tensions, some Republicans have followed the example of Moore, expressing the dissatisfaction of Doge’s tactics while taking care to remain favorable to its global objectives.
Tom Cole, whose Oklahoma District contains a large federal workforce, told local media this week That he had brought “errors” to the attention of Musk and stopped cuts to the National Weather Center and to a local social security office, as well as a local hospital.
“You must be able to plead for your voters to plead in case,” said Cole, chairman of the Chamber’s credit committee, who controls the government’s handbag.
“But at the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with the executive branch that looks at all the facilities,” he added. “We have redundant installations, we have waste. We lead a deficit of 2 TN. So, I’m not going to get angry with someone who brings me ideas about how to save money. ”
There is no sign of a republican member of the congress going further and at war openly with Musk. Aside from the dangers of the upheaval of the richest political donor in the United States, the representatives fear not being against their voters voting Trump, who are sympathetic to the wider Mission of Doge.
A Harvard Caps / Harris survey last month found that 70% of Americans thought that the government was “filled with waste, fraud and ineffectiveness”. About 85% of Republicans said they thought Dog was helping to make “major discounts” of the budget.
“If you don’t already like Trump, the Doge Cutts have made you hate it more,” said a republican strategist who advised members of the room. “However, the majority of Americans think that there is significant waste and fraud within the government and are exuberant that it is discussed.”
Such exuberance lacked among federal workers in Ogden. IRS employees said that they were blind when a few hundred probation employees – a category that includes anyone who has started a new role in the past year, regardless of their seniority or their previous employment years – have been released without apparent explanation.
In an office already under sub-efficient, “people had gone” overnight, said Torrie, including members of her team who earn less than $ 40,000 per year but who collectively recovered millions of dollars for the American taxpayer each year.
According to DOGE’s proposals, an additional 20% of IRS ‘workforce should be dismissed by May 15. In Ogden, this would result in around 1,500 additional losses, the union organizers said.
Jeremy, who has worked for IRS in the city for 20 years, said that the cuts had been made with “no pension.” His parents, his sister and his cousin all work or worked for the service, he added, predicting that other layoffs would be “an economic disaster” for the region, especially if they were spreading at the base of the Air Force and the veterans hospital near Salt Lake.
The IRS and a Doge representative did not respond to requests for comments. Moore’s office refused to comment.
On Saturday, a few dozen workers gathered in front of the IRS building in downtown Ogden to protest against the last cups. “You cannot meet anyone here who is not affected by a federal employee,” said Krystal Kirkpatrick, a local union official who has been working for IRS for 12 years.
The IRS in Ogden alone employs around 8,000 people, according to Phil Dean, chief economist of the Kem C Gardner Policy Institute of the University of Utah. “If you only look at Weber County, where the real facilities (IRS) are located, around 6% of employment in this area.”
But few colleagues from Kirkpatrick attended the rally. “We are all a little nervous, we all have a target on the back,” she said.
Rick, a local veteran, said he had agreed that the government needed a reform. “There will always be something that must be improved,” he said. But he criticized the way Doge had approached the layoffs. Many IRS employees in Ogden voted for Trump, he added, but “they had no idea of the chaos he was going to bring”.
Federal courts have recently ordered the rewriting of probationary employees, including in Ogden, but they may not be able to prevent more complete cuts provided by DOGE at IRS and elsewhere.
“The judicial branch came for us,” said Daniel Martinez, a speaker during the Saturday rally. “We also need the congress to act for us.”
Visualization of data by Martin Stabe