Fox Business host Larry Kudlow urges Trump to seize on the shutdown to fire up to 500,000 more federal workers
Kudlow: “The size and scope of government should be reduced. This is a great opportunity to do it.”
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Citation
From the October 7, 2025, edition of Fox News' America Reports
LARRY KUDLOW (FOX BUSINESS HOST): Just think of it this way. You have something like 750-800,000 jobs that are called "nonessential." All right? I've been through this a bunch of times. If they're nonessential, they're nonessential. OK? Cut them. End them. OK. You might want to give them some buyout stuff and some severance pay, I don't want to be cruel about this.
But the size and scope of government should be reduced. This is a great opportunity to do it. The Democrats have overstepped very badly on this shutdown and so forth. But the point is, don't do it temporarily, OK? If they're nonessential, it's like DOGE 2.0. And just for backup, there's about 275,000, almost 300,000 federal workers who will be ending their term. They're being bought out with incentives and severance pay this year. You can do another 3, 400,000 — I don't know how many — 500,000, because they're not essential, and the public would understand that. And they could be treated well, OK? So, you wouldn't — you'd have to spend a little money in the short run in order to save an enormous amount of money in the long run.
And Russ Vought — I call it Russ Vought's "secret sauce," Russ has been on the show. The president has the authority, since there's no financing, the appropriations are not there anymore. That's the whole shutdown. So he can do this, and that's what he should do.