“The outgoing Trump administration is racing to enact the biggest change to the federal civil service in generations, reclassifying career employees at key agencies to strip their job protections and leave them open to being fired before Joe Biden takes office,” the Washington Post reports.

“The move to pull off an executive order the president issued less than two weeks before Election Day — affecting tens of thousands of people in policy roles — is accelerating at the agency closest to the White House, the Office of Management and Budget.”

Bloomberg: “Republican and Democratic lawmakers have reached an agreement on spending levels for the annual spending bill needed to keep the government open after current funding runs out Dec. 11, according to two congressional aides in both parties.”

Joseph Stiglitz: “The Trump administration has a dirty little secret: It’s not just planning to increase taxes on most Americans. The increase has already been signed, sealed and delivered, buried in the pages of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.”

“President Trump and his congressional allies hoodwinked us. The law they passed initially lowered taxes for most Americans, but it built in automatic, stepped tax increases every two years that begin in 2021 and that by 2027 would affect nearly everyone but people at the top of the economic hierarchy. All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019.”

ProPublica: “In late November 2017, Senate Republicans were racing to secure the votes for their sweeping tax overhaul. With no Democrats supporting the bill and even some Republicans wavering, Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican, found herself with enormous leverage. The day before the vote, she offered an amendment to make the legislation, which lavished tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy, more equitable…”

“Then Collins backed down. The day after she introduced it, as the Senate voted on the bill, a Republican Senate aide told a Treasury Department official that Collins was ‘no longer offering her amendment,’ according to emails obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. … Her turnabout has been one of the mysteries surrounding the $1.5 trillion tax bill, which slashed the corporate rate.”

“These are the same people saying that we can’t have tuition-free public colleges because there’s no money when these motherfuckers are only paying $750 a year in taxes.”

— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), quoted by Vanity Fair.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was interviewed by Jonathan Swan on Axios on HBO:

CRUZ: I’m very worried about the debt…Now, to be fair, Trump didn’t campaign on cutting the debt.

SWAN: He did. He said he was gonna eliminate the national debt in 8 years.

The U.S. budget deficit eclipsed $3.1 trillion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, by far the biggest one-year gap in U.S. history, the Washington Post reports.

The data are a stark reflection of the staggering blow that the coronavirus pandemic has dealt to the U.S. economy.

“A Houston tech executive was charged on Thursday with hiding $2 billion in income from the Internal Revenue Service in what federal prosecutors called the largest tax evasion case in U.S. history,” the New York Times reports.

“Federal prosecutors said the executive, Robert Brockman, had used a web of entities based in Bermuda and Nevis, as well as secret bank accounts in Bermuda and Switzerland, to hide income from the I.R.S. that he had earned on private equity investments over 20 years.”

President Trump signed stopgap spending legislation early Thursday to avert a government shutdown weeks before the presidential election, Bloomberg reports.

The spending authority of the U.S. had lapsed at midnight.

House Democrats have reached a deal with the Trump administration on legislation to fund the government through December 11, Axios reports.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) signaled that Republican senators would oppose the stopgap government funding bill released by House Democrats earlier today.

“House Democrats on Monday released their proposal for short-term legislation to fund the government through December 11,” Axios reports.

“This is Congress’ chief legislative focus before the election. They must pass a continuing resolution before midnight on Oct. 1 to avoid a government shutdown — something both Hill leaders and the White House have claimed is off the table.”