Good day all. In a little over a month, we have seen a sea change in how things work in Washington D.C. President Trump isn’t just draining the swamp, he’s preparing to nuke it from orbit as the only way to be sure.
The Administration has already let go 200K probationary government workers and now they are looking to make even deeper cuts. President Trump has directed all the agencies, with some specific exceptions, to prepare for a massive Reduction in Force. Here are the details from Fox News:
The Trump administration will direct heads of agencies across the federal government to prepare to initiate “large-scale reductions in force” and develop reorganization plans by mid-March, Fox News Digital has learned.
This RIF is a long time coming as far as most Americans are concerned. Since the creation of the Bureaucratic State by Franklin D. Roosevelt, (A Democrat), the United States has seen a serious assault on the individual liberties and rights of the average American Citizen. Under Republican presidents, there have been some attempts to slow the growth, but under the Democrats, the number of government workers, most of whom don’t really do anything useful, has exploded.
Fox News Digital exclusively obtained the memo that will be sent Wednesday to agency heads by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought and acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Charles Ezell. The memo directs them to prepare to eliminate roles and submit plans for reorganization by March 13.
The actual memo is available on the Fox News story. I have a suspicion that this wasn’t handed to them by an “Anonymous source” either. There is a big exception to who is at risk for layoff, which isn’t surprising.
The memo states, however, that government positions “necessary to meet law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities” are exempt from the order, as well as officials nominated and appointed to positions requiring presidential appointment or Senate confirmation, officials in the Executive Office of the President and U.S. Postal Service workers.
So basically, people who do actual work and not shuffle papers or come up with perverted chat messages on government systems while on government time.
The memo is titled “guidance on agency RIF and reorganization plans requested by implementing the president’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ workforce optimization initiative.”
“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” the memo states. “At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public.”
The memo points to the president’s February executive order, which directed agencies to “eliminate waste, bloat and insularity” in order to “empower American families, workers, taxpayers, and our system of Government itself.”
The recent kerfluffle over the instructions to government workers to respond to the email that was sent out with 5 bullet points listing what that worker did the following week was probably part of the plans to do a Reduction In Force. I’ve heard that about 50% of the federal work force replied with most of those actually doing as instructed. Others, or so the rumors say, just insulted President Trump and Elon Musk. (Nice of them to volunteer to be let go)
“President Trump required that ‘Agency Heads shall promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force, consistent with applicable law,’” the memo states, noting that agencies have to submit reorganization plans “no later than March 13, 2025.”
Normally when a company in the Dreaded Private Sector does a layoff, it’s for one or two reasons. First, they need to cut costs because their income is down. The other reason is that they just have to many people for the available work. In the case of the Federal Government, this is going to be a first. They have never let anyone go due to lack of work or costs. Of course, they’ve never had a president who was a private sector businessman with a grudge either.
OMB and OPM directed agency heads to focus on “maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily-required functions.”
That, to be honest, looks a bit to weaselly worded for me. Still, most of the things the Federal Government has been doing for the last 100+ years isn’t something that is required by the Constitution. I think that the EPA, The Department of Education and several other departments and agencies could be flat out shut down in their entirety with everyone fired.
OMB and OPM also directed agencies to consolidate areas of their organization charts that are “duplicative,” and consolidate management layers “where unnecessary layers exist.”
Now that is a major target. The layers of management in the average bureaucracy is ridiculous. As for duplication? Oh boy is there, and it’s very common for the two sections to issue diametrically opposite instructions to people.
They are also directing agencies to “maximally reduce the use of outside consultants and contractors.”
There are contractors and consultants who do real work. However, those are usually people on the lower end of the spectrum. What you usually see are consultants making 6 and 7 figures who are politically connected who don’t actually produce much of anything other then receipts for expenses.
As for office space, the memo says agency heads should close or consolidate regional field offices and should align those closures or relocations of bureaus and offices with agency return-to-office actions “to avoid multiple relocation benefit costs for individual employees.”
DOGE has done some work on the office space that the General Services Administration manages. They found that a lot of it is empty and hasn’t been used in years, in some cases long before the Covid-19 Work at home stuff. There are building that the Government owns or leases that have never been used. Others, such as the Nancy Pelosi building in San Francisco, are already on the chopping block.
The memo says “Phase 1” of reorganization plans should be submitted by March 13, with “Phase 2” being submitted by April 14.
“Phase 2 plans shall outline a positive vision for more productive, efficient agency operations going forward,” the memo explains. “Phase 2 plans should be planned for implementation by September 30, 2025.”
This is the Federal Government. Anyone who suggested ways to be more efficient were usually considered troublemakers and moved to a broom closet where they couldn’t push those ideas of efficiency on others. After all, the primary job of a bureaucrat is to increase the size of the bureaucracy. However, as the old saying goes, we have a new sheriff in town and he there to clean things up.
It will be interesting to see just how large a Reduction in Force is done. For far to long, it’s been all but impossible to downsize the various agencies and departments. This was due to several factors. Civil Service, the Unions and the complete lack of will to do so by most administrations. One thing that the Unions and the Civil Service system can’t stop are mass layoffs. Now these petty little tyrants in the Bureaucracy are going to find out what all of us in the Dreaded Private Sector have been dealing with all our working lives. If you are looking for any sympathy?
Thatisall
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