Trump is changing the Bureaucracy…

And the Progressives are most unhappy. Good day all. One of the things President Trump promised was to reduce the size of government. He began doing this as soon as he was sworn into office, by putting a hiring freeze into place.

As his cabinet was confirmed and took control of the various agencies, the new secretaries began doing something unheard of. Layoffs and buyouts. They also didn’t fill any new vacancies that opened up. One of the more notable bureaucracies affected was the Department of State where hundreds of openings have not been filled and hundreds more Professional Globalists have retired or quit. This has upset the Beltway Uniparty Progressives to no end, and one of their propaganda organs, the Washington (Com)Post has the story:

Nearly a year into his takeover of Washington, President Trump has made a significant down payment on his campaign pledge to shrink the federal bureaucracy, a shift long sought by conservatives that could eventually bring the workforce down to levels not seen in decades.

By the end of September, all Cabinet departments except Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Interior had fewer permanent staff than when Trump took office in January — with most shedding many hundreds of employees, according to an analysis of federal personnel data by The Washington Post.

And I, along with many Americans, consider that to be a good start. Of course, the Professional Political Class is aghast at this.

The diminishing federal footprint comes after Trump promised in last year’s campaign to “cut so much your head will spin,” and it reverses a boost in hiring under President Barack Obama. The falloff has been driven by an exodus of civil servants, a diminished corps of political appointees and an effective hiring freeze.

And another Obama legacy is being taken out and shot. His belief that only a massive and intrusive government can run the country. For all intents and purposes, most of the new jobs created under King Putt were phony baloney government jobs.

The White House is now warning agencies to brace for even deeper cuts in the 2019 budget it will announce early next year, part of an effort to lower the federal deficit to pay for the new tax law, according to officials briefed on the budgets for their agencies. One possible casualty: a pay raise that federal employees historically have received when the economy is humming.

Aww, isn’t that sad? The bureaucrats are going to have to deal with the same thing those of us who work in the Dreaded Private Sector have been dealing with for decades. No pay hikes and layoffs. Sucks to be you guys, doesn’t it?

The administration’s effort so far to reshape the workforce of nearly 2 million civil servants that serves as the backbone of the government already has provoked a contentious culture shift. Federal workers fret that their jobs could be zeroed out amid buyouts and early retirement offers that already have prompted hundreds of their colleagues to leave, according to interviews with three dozen employees across the government. Many chafed as supervisors laid down new rules they said are aimed at holding poor performers and problem workers to account.

Holding incompetent federal employees accountable? The Horror! How dare they? Don’t these Trump people know that without us, America will collapse into anarchy? You must have bureaucrats, no matter what their level of competence, in place to control the population. Why, without government bureaucrats running things, people might actually start making their own decisions, and we can’t have that!

A hiring freeze technically lifted in the spring has been kept in practice at most agencies, hollowing out many offices. And the slow pace of political appointments has left a number of departments with a leadership vacuum in their upper ranks.

That just matches the vacuum in the lower ranks, those who just live to suck the lifeblood out of Americans.

“Morale has never been lower,” said Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal workers at more than 30 agencies. “Government is making itself a lot less attractive as an employer.”

Trump already has begun to reverse the growth of the Obama era, when the government added a total of 188,000 permanent employees, according to Office of Personnel Management data. By the end of September, the federal government had 1.94 million permanent workers, down nearly 16,000 overall since the beginning of the year, according to the most recent OPM data. In the first nine months of 2009, Obama’s first year in office, the government added 68,000 permanent employees, growing to 1.84 million.

The basic premise of the Uniparty is that more people slurping at the public trough is better. It means more power to the Elites. This is why they are so unhappy. All those reliable Progressive voters are being shown the door and openings for those who leave on their own aren’t being filled.

The shrinking federal workforce could end up undercutting some of Trump’s priorities. Employment within the Defense Department, which Trump has promised to beef up, dropped by 1 percent, or 7,811 civilian workers across all branches of the military.

Simple answer, recruit more people for the military. Most of the openings were probably filled by uniformed personnel until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then Bubba Horndog declared “Peace dividend! Get rid of the soldiers who probably vote Republican and hire more Progressive civilian Democrats!!” I suspect a lot of those jobs were not needed either.

And the Internal Revenue Service, which is charged with the complex task of implementing Trump’s tax overhaul plan, lost 6,801 permanent staffers in the first nine months of this year, a drop of nearly 9 percent, personnel data shows.

Gutting the IRS should be a top priority for the Trump administration. We need to get rid of all the Lois Lerners who think it’s their job to suppress anyone who doesn’t toe the Progressive line.

There are signs that Trump’s polarizing presidency has helped drive more civil servants to the exits this year — voluntary departures that have contributed to the shrinking workforce.

Not seeing a problem here. I consider that a feature, not a bug.

During the first six months of the administration, 71,285 career employees quit or retired. That’s up from 50,000 who left during the same period in 2009, according to the most recent OPM data.

Good riddance! Of course, the pensions of those who retired, (Excluding military personnel who earn their pensions with their very lives), will cost the taxpayers a bundle for the next 2 or 3 decades.

Among them is Noah Kunin, the former infrastructure director for 18F, the high-profile office created in the General Services Administration in 2014 to boost the government’s digital services.

Kunin said he lost staff who did not want to work for the new administration — and then was unable to replace them because of the early hiring freeze. He said he grew frustrated with what he called a slow start by the White House on bringing private-sector solutions to the government.

“I was involved in several major initiatives, and they were all stalled,” he recalled.

Would you care to guess that the entire office will be closed down and defunded?

Trump has also moved slowly in appointing the most important personnel in his government: the political leaders who are supposed to be the architects of his vision.

There are a couple of reasons for that. First, the Trump administration needs to find really qualified people, and they aren’t that easy to find, especially those who are willing to go through the rectal exam appointees must submit to. Another reason is that many of these agencies, departments and offices are a complete waste of time and money and the Trump administration wants to make them go away. If they’re closing an office, why put someone in place?

A slow recruitment and vetting process, combined with drawn-out Senate confirmation schedules, stalled the process. As of last week, 79 nominees across the government had waited more than 100 days for a Senate hearing. ut the president has also expressed skepticism that such appointees are valuable.

“I tell my people, ‘Where you don’t need to fill slots, don’t fill them,’ ” Trump told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham in November.

In the meantime, many agencies have relied heavily on career employees in acting leadership roles. But their leadership can be tentative.

“Some careerists feel paralyzed,” said Reginald Wells, who recently retired from the Social Security Administration as human resources chief. “They don’t want to make a mistake.”

And this is a problem. These are bureaucrats. Most of them wouldn’t last 2 minutes in the “Dreaded Private Sector” especially as managers. In the DPS, (Dreaded Private Sector), if you make a mistake, and own up to it, usually there are no real professional repercussions. Of course, there are exceptions to that. If you cost the company a massive amount of money, and it was due to flat out incompetence rather then an honest mistake, you could be shown the door.

In government bureaucracies, it’s very hard to fire incompetent morons, but they can transfer people to really bad locations and jobs. There is also the political issues to deal with. While politics is not supposed to enter the thinking of the civil service bureaucrats, we’ve seen how it has, especially over the last 9 years. Since most conservative people and groups want to reduce the bureaucracies, the bureaucrats see that as a direct threat to their livelihoods and will abuse their positions to “Get” anyone they perceive as a threat to them. Now they have a president who thinks like the average American and it scare the crap out of them.

For those inside the bureaucracy, a new Trump-era focus on accountability has meant working under greater oversight — and in some cases, fear of reprisals. Agencies have told employees that they should no longer count on getting glowing reviews in their performance appraisals, according to staff in multiple offices, as has been the case for years.

Now there’s a culture shift if I ever saw one! I have undergone many reviews in my working career, and they can be rough. In the DPS, you are actually expected to perform and help your employers make money. If you can’t perform, then out the door you go. In the government sector, it doesn’t matter if you know what you’re doing or not. Short of murdering your manager, you’re going to get a good review and a pay raise with a probable promotion to boot. Now that we have a President who has actually run a business, he, like most Americans, expects the people working under him to do their jobs and do them well.

Housing and Urban Development managers, for example, are being evaluated for the first time on how effectively they address poor performers, according to Ashaki Robinson Johns, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 476, which represents HUD employees.

Telework — a popular Obama-era policy that expanded work from home — has come under scrutiny as Trump officials have questioned whether it is a license to goof off. The Agriculture and Commerce departments are now moving to restrict the flexible work policy, in some offices by half the amount of time previously permitted, according to documents and employees.

Now I have worked from home, and the Anger Central Primary Dwelling is configured with a home office. In the DPS, people who work from home tend to put in more hours then those who go into the office each day. Their work can be evaluated relatively easily. However, for government employees? Since it’s almost impossible to fire them, of course they will goof off.

One of the main targets for the Trump administration is the Veterans Affairs department. Over the last few years, we’ve seen just how badly mismanaged that department is, to the point that people who served, and in many cases, were wounded in the service to our nation, are dying due to lack of care. President Trump has been quietly dealing with this, and in the process has begun to scare the bejeesus out of those worthless drones.

Honestly, I think we could do without a good 80% of the government workforce, and most of the government agencies and departments could be closed down with their responsibilities transferred back to the states. For to long, those working in the government have thought themselves above the “common people” and put themselves first. Now, for the first time in their careers, they are actually being held to account. It’s about time.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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