Sen. John Curtis: Federal layoffs a 'stop-the-car moment' for America

PROVO — On long road trips to Disneyland with his six children, John Curtis occasionally had to invoke the dreaded threat to pull the car to the side of the road until the kids could stop fighting and work out their differences over who touched the other first.

"I am done with you kids. I'm stopping the car. We're not going to Disneyland until you work this out," Curtis recalled telling them.

It's a scenario most parents and children have found themselves in at some point and one that Curtis — now Utah's junior Republican senator — likened to President Donald Trump's and adviser Elon Musk's attempts to slash the federal workforce and kneecap several federal agencies. Dressed in a forest green suit and bright green tie, Curtis spoke to a St. Patrick's Day crowd of several hundred Brigham Young University students in Provo Monday and was asked by the moderator to address layoffs across the federal government.

While government jobs have traditionally been stable and predictable, Curtis said Trump has introduced a level of "uncertainty," but in light of the trillions in debt the government accrues each year, the senator said the "disruption" could be necessary, if painful.

"In many ways, the country stopped the car last November with the election," he said. "They wanted disruption because they were tired of government spending more money than it was bringing in. They wanted disruption because they knew what was happening down on the border was wrong for people — not just for us as a country, but wrong for people. They wanted disruption because people are dying in overseas wars that don't need to die."

"And that is a painful thing, and we're going through that as a country right now," he added. "It's a stop-the-car moment, and that means there's going to be some uncomfortableness, and there's going to be some layoffs."

Although there are no official figures for how many federal staffers have been let go since Trump took office in January — the Associated Press estimates several hundred thousand have been terminated — Curtis said that's still a relatively small portion of the 2.4 million civilian workers.

The senator was also asked about the role of Congress to act as a check on presidential power, after voters in Utah and elsewhere have called on the legislative branch to rein in what they see as some of Trump's excesses. But Curtis said the Senate's powers of checking the president, largely through approving or rejecting cabinet nominees, are "not much of a check."

"Sometimes I feel like shouting from the house tops: The Senate does not elect the president, you do. And yet, you want me to fix it," he said. "Too often we're looking to Washington and saying, 'Rein the president in,' and yet we're ... not looking at society that for a long time has elected a president the people don't feel like represents them, and yet they get there because the people put them there."

Curtis said the courts have the primary responsibility for checking executive power, and the judiciary is "the most active in reining in the president right now."

"That's what the founders wanted," he said.

And though some Trump critics have said the country is approaching a constitutional crisis if the administration chose not to follow one of the many court orders temporarily pausing some executive orders, Curtis said it is "the exact opposite of a constitutional crisis because those are all being checked."

Related topics