(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says the layoffs President Trump has ordered during the federal government shutdown are long overdue. Ernst suggests the president’s “Reduction in Force” or RIF program should target Internal Revenue Service employees who owe back taxes.

Ernst says there are far more who should be fired.

The U-S Department of Energy operates 17 National Laboratories. Ernst cites a 2023 report in The Nation magazine in which employees at a nuclear weapons complex in New Mexico admitted they had napped and played games during the workday.

That came from an electrician assigned to work in a restricted area of the facility where the first atomic bomb was created. Energy Department officials told the magazine they did not find evidence a manager was falsifying time sheets for electricians who are part of a massive workforce upgrading the country’s nuclear stockpile.

On October 1st, Ernst released a Congressional Budget Office analysis that estimates 750-thousand government employees have been furloughed during the shutdown. Ernst says the shutdown exposes that many of those employees are truly non-essential and should be put on the chopping block.