Take this job and shove it
I ain’t working here no more.
Sung by Johnny Paycheck
America’s budget deficit is on track to hit $1.9 trillion, which will be added to the nation’s accumulated national debt of $36 trillion.
Elon Musk, chief of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is moving savagely to prune the federal workforce, which he urgently needs to do.
He began by offering buyouts to entice federal employees to resign–a classic corporate tactic to trim payroll costs. So far, roughly 75,000 people have accepted the offer, a tiny percentage of the nation’s 2.3 million federal workers.
Unfortunately, the employees who accepted the offer include some of the nation’s most efficient bureaucrats. That’s because the people who left federal service have job skills that can transfer to the private sector.
Most civil servants are hanging on to their federal jobs despite a pointed invitation to leave. These include those who don’t have the skills or experience to find employment outside the DC swamp. They will dig in at least long enough to reach retirement age.
DOGE will be forced to fire thousands of government workers to trim the workforce. Many will file lawsuits challenging DOGE’s authority to make the government more efficient. They’ll also avail themselves of the elaborate civil service regulations that protect their constitutional right to due process.
In short, it will be months or even years before the federal workforce shrinks. Meanwhile, the primary beneficiaries of the DOGE initiative will be lawyers–lots and lots of lawyers.
In the near future, we are likely to see the passive-aggressive nature of the federal civil service rear its ugly head as the apparatchiks of the DC swamp begin a work slowdown. We can’t fulfill our duties, the bureaucrats will moan, because the workforce has been slashed by a “Nazi nepo baby.”
Indeed, we are already seeing worksite sabotage in the Social Security Administration. Senior SSA administrators say it will be more than a year before they implement the directives of the Social Security Fairness Act, which is intended to benefit retirees who have been unfairly penalized.
Why? They’re understaffed.
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| Take number. A federal bureaucrat will assist you sometime in the next century. |