JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

The battle lines are drawn for tomorrow's high stakes Oval Office meeting between President Trump and bipartisan congressional leaders one day before the deadline to avert a government shutdown.

Appearing separately on NBC's Meet the Press, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer each said the other would be to blame for a shutdown.

SEN.

JOHN THUNE (R) Majority Leader: I think there is potentially a path forward.

We have to see where it goes.

But we can't do it while the American people are being held hostage by the Democrats in a government shutdown.

SEN.

CHUCK SCHUMER (D) Minority Leader: We need a serious negotiation.

Now, if the president at this meeting is going to rant and just yell at Democrats and talk about all his alleged grievances and say this, that and the other thing, we won't get anything done.

JOHN YANG: Republicans want a short term spending bill without any other provisions, while Democrats say the price of their support is restoring Medicaid cuts and extending subsidies that help low and middle income earners buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

Adding to the uncertainty are administration plans to use a shutdown to fire more federal workers.

Eric Katz covers federal agencies for the online publication Government Executive.

Eric, tell us about these plans to use this shutdown to fire more federal workers.

ERIC KATZ, Reporter, Government Executive: The White House, through its budget office, put out guidance this past week advising agencies that they should develop plans to instead of having the normal furloughs of, you know, employees are sent home only until the shutdown ends, they would instead be sent home permanently.

They would lose their jobs.

The White House said the agencies should focus on any federal employee who doesn't receive special funding for their job.

So anyone funded through the normal annual appropriations and anyone whose work is not focused on Trump administration priority.

So there'd be certain areas that would be exempted from this, but large swaths of the federal government would be facing potential layoffs under this shutdown.

JOHN YANG: How does this fit in with the president's goal of reshaping the federal government and making it smaller?

ERIC KATZ: President Trump has been focused on shrinking the size of the federal workforce and the federal government since he took office.

Not too long after he took office, he ordered similar layoff plans from every agency.

A couple agencies went through with those.

Health and Human Services, for one, laid off 10,000 people.

But a lot of those got held up in court, and then they never ended up being implemented, at least not yet.

But the administration has taken other steps to shrink the federal workforce through offering various incentives.

I believe the administration has said that around 2 or 300,000 federal employees will be off the rolls by the end of September compared to what they inherited in January.

Then they also have a hiring freeze.

So very few new employees are coming in.

And this is just the next step in that process to potentially further shrink the agency's workforces.

JOHN YANG: In your conversations with federal workers, is this adding to the anxiety and the concern as we approach a possible shutdown?

ERIC KATZ: It absolutely is.

We've talked to a lot of folks over the last couple days since this memo came out.

Everyone is sort of panicked.

There's always a bit of anxiety during a shutdown.

Over half the federal workforce, in a normal shutdown continues to work, and they only on the promise of delayed pay.

They face a lot of negative rhetoric from the administration over the last several months, and they've been incentivized and pushed and in some cases, forced out of their jobs.

And this is, like I said, the next step in that.

And we've been hearing from folks over the last few months that their workforces are already trimmed back to the bone and they're already struggling to carry out key functions.

Some of these agencies are doing less enforcement or less oversight.

At national parks, there's bathrooms that are not being cleaned and certain services that are no longer being offered.

We've reported on the Forest Service that they.

They're really struggling to keep haste.

You could really go down the gamut with this.

You know, we've talked to people at Veterans Affairs who are saying that they're not able to provide the same care that they used to because of staffing issues there.

And if there's further cuts, further layoffs, that would only exacerbate some of these issues that we've been hearing about.

And employees, you know, you talk about morale.

The employees have been saying for months that because of this pressure to leave and because of some of the rhetoric that's being coming out from the White House that they just.

They feel attacked or villainized.

And this is, you know, as we're having these discussions over the last few days, they're saying this is just continuing to add to that.

JOHN YANG: You know, a lot of people, when they hear federal workers, they think Washington, D.C.

but.

But it goes well beyond that, doesn't it?

ERIC KATZ: Yeah.

About 15 percent of federal workforce is based in the D.C.

area.

Vast majority is spread out around the country and around the world in some cases.

We actually, before this memo came out, we had reported that the Interior Department, for example, is contemplating and preparing for widespread layoffs.

And those employees are in national parks and in regional offices all around the country.

You can think through Social Security Administration and VA and all sorts of land management agencies in addition to Interior and, you know, even like EPA enforcement there.

These people are not just in D.C.

but they're in offices all around the country.

And some of them would almost certainly be subject to these layoffs if they are seen through.

JOHN YANG: Eric Katz of Government Executive.

Thank you very much.

ERIC KATZ: Thank you.