Donald Trump really, really wants to get rid of a large chunk of the federal bureaucracy. Maybe he wants to replace them with loyalists, maybe he wants to farm the jobs out to private businesses that just so happened to contribute to his election campaign and his inauguration, maybe both.
Despite his hamfisted approach to most things, however, Trump clearly knows that getting rid of entrenched federal employees is a very tough hill to climb, and that he could easily spend his entire term trying to make it happen in court, without actually succeeding (or even coming to a resolution). This being the case, the White House made a big announcement yesterday: Federal employees who agree to resign immediately will be paid through the end of September. This is described as a "deferred resignation."
If "deferred resignation" sounds a bit like NewSpeak to you, you might be on the right track. Similarly, the option to quit is described, in the e-mail that was sent to federal employees, as "voluntary." Technically true, but the same e-mail also said: "At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency..." In other words, "You might just want to quit while the quitting is good, if you know what's best for you."
The deadline for a decision is February 6, and the White House guesses that between 5% and 10% of federal employees will take the deal. Of course, some percentage of those would have quit anyhow—the average length of service in a federal government job is about 13.5 years, which implies a turnover rate of around 7%. So, the new program actually increases the cost of getting rid of some meaningful number of soon-to-quit folks.
And while we suggest in the opening paragraph that Trump's goal is to replace employees he does not regard as useful to him with employees who are useful (either by doing his bidding, or by pleasing the donor class), it's possible that the game here, at least in part, is not to replace them at all. That would be consistent with the plans of Elon Musk and DOGE. And it's worth noting that Musk loyalists have taken over the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
If Trump is indeed going to slash the federal workforce, well, it should be noted that the number of federal employees has been basically steady since 1970, while the population of the U.S. has more than doubled. It is already something of a cliché that you can't get the IRS or the SSA on the phone when you really need to. The harder these things get, and the longer it takes to secure things like passports, the less happy voters will be. It's all good and well to say "cut the budget," but it's many orders of magnitude harder to do it without getting a whole bunch of blowback. (Z)