During a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing, Arizona Senator and Navy combat veteran Mark Kelly (D-AZ) pressed Secretary of Energy Chris Wright on last year’s workforce reductions at the agency and got a rare admission of fault from a member of this administration.
Kelly laid out the stakes of the workforce challenge facing the nuclear program: “All of these priorities depend on a workforce made up of nuclear engineers, machinists, experts in explosives, and other highly specialized professionals to get this job done. These people are hard to train. They’re hard to hire. They’re hard to retain at times. There are limited educational pipelines to find them. Many of them are retiring, and there’s enormous competition in the private sector. This workforce challenge has become more urgent following last year’s workforce reductions.
“Secretary Wright, to me, that’s not a bureaucratic error, it’s a fundamental error in how things were planned. And it means the people who ordered these cuts didn’t seem to understand the agency.”
Wright claimed the cuts brought the Department of Energy back to roughly its size at the start of the Biden administration. In fact, according to reports, DOE had approximately 14,000 federal employees at the start of the Biden administration, 15,000–16,000 by the end, and now sits at 11,000–12,000 following the Trump cuts.
Wright took responsibility for a mistake that resulted in mission-critical personnel being wrongly terminated: “In my first week after confirmation, there was a term ‘provisional employees.’ […] I thought it was newly hired people that we were in training.
“That was a screw up. That was on me. We reversed that screw up within 24 hours, but I own that screw up.”
Kelly acknowledged the admission directly: “I appreciate you taking responsibility. We don’t see a lot of that from this administration.”
Kelly closed by underscoring what is at stake: “As an engineer myself, I just know the value of having nuclear scientists, computational scientists, weapons technicians. We just have to be really careful, because your mission in this agency is so critical to our national security. And these folks are trained for years and years, and we’ve got to make sure we have the workforce in place.”
Sen. Kelly questions Secretary Wright during a SASC hearing.
Click here to download a video of Kelly’s remarks. See the transcript below:
Senator Kelly:
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here and testifying today. Secretary Wright, good to see you again. The Department of Energy is in the middle of an immense change right now. You and your Department are modernizing the stockpile, restarting plutonium pit production, and sustaining the naval reactor fleet, all while supporting a growing mission set. All of these priorities depend on a workforce made up of nuclear engineers, machinists, experts in explosives, and other highly specialized professionals to get this job done. These people are hard to train. They’re hard to hire. They’re hard to retain at times. There are limited educational pipelines to find them. Many of them are retiring, and there’s enormous competition in the private sector. This workforce challenge has become more urgent following last year’s workforce reductions. It’s not just the number of people that you lost. It’s the way it was done and the signal that sends. When termination notices went out, some personnel performing mission critical functions and holding Q–clearances were immediately stripped of access, leaving them unable to transfer ongoing projects. At the same time, others in positions not tied to immediate operational requirements retained access long after their dismissal. Secretary Wright, to me, that’s not a bureaucratic error, it’s a fundamental error in how things were planned. And it means the people who ordered these cuts didn’t seem to understand the agency. It would be helpful to understand how did that order come to you and your department on who to cut and how many people to cut? And if it did, did you push back and conduct any sort of review? And how are these cuts carried out that resulted in the issues were currently facing?
Secretary Wright:
Thank you for the question, Senator Kelly. First of all, the net result, we’ve reduced the headcount at the Department of Energy to about where it was at the beginning of the Biden administration. It grew dramatically during the Biden administration, and we shrunk it back down roughly to the size it was at the beginning of the Biden administration. And almost all of that, way over 95%, all of that was voluntary. We offered severance packages to people that wanted to take them and didn’t. Some people, we said, ‘Hey, no, we actually can’t give it to you. We need you to stay.’ And we would make a pitch in a cell. So, it was a slow going—it was directed and driven by me. It was in different departments, in different areas where we offered these “packages”.
Kelly:
But you were told to cut these specific people.
Wright:
I was not told to cut these specific people.
Kelly:
Were you given like a headcount?
Wright:
No, I was not, I was not. There was a mistake made early on and you referenced it. And that was entirely my fault in my first week after confirmation, there was a term “provisional employees.” I rightfully took it as—or wrongfully, wrongfully, 100% my fault—I thought it was newly hired people that we were in training, and there were a lot of them. We had the people that were hired for educational promotion and we made a broad-brush thing to remove the provisional employees. That was a mistake. And you referenced some of the impacts of it because provisional did not mean what I thought it meant. My fault. And you could have been new in a role, you’ve been at the department for 15 years, but you’re newly in a role in your considered provisional and we lost some, or we wrongly laid off a number of critical, very important people in NNSA. As soon as I realized that which was within 24 hours, we called all of them back and all but two came back. That was a screw up. That was on me. We reversed that screw up within 24 hours, but I own that screw up. The rest of the restructuring of our department was choices also led by me. It was done slow and thoughtfully and entirely from myself and leadership within the department.
Kelly:
All right. Well, Secretary Wright. I appreciate you taking responsibility. We don’t see a lot of that from this administration. And I would just—could I have 30 more seconds, Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Wicker:
Is there objection anywhere in the room? Without objection.
Kelly:
As an engineer myself, I just know the value of having nuclear scientists, computational scientists, weapons technicians. We just have to be really careful because your mission in this agency is so critical to our national security. And these folks are trained for years and years, and we’ve got to make sure we have the workforce in place. So, I appreciate you being candid and being accountable.
Wright:
I agree with that sentiment very much. These are critical people with very specialized skills, one of the biggest jobs of the three of us here, and the rest at the Department behind me, is to make a culture that people are proud and love to work. Getting people fired up so they’ll stay in our labs and our weapons programs and not go to the private sector is a huge part of our job, which is why we driven a lot of reforms in the national labs to get rid of the bureaucracy, allow them to move quick, have more decision making at the tip of the spear. I want to make sure that the morale at the labs is much higher when I leave than when I arrive. I share your assessment of that. And thank you for asking those questions, Senator.
Kelly:
Thank you.
Wicker:
I applaud the agreement between the Secretary and the Senator.
