Posted on 09/18/2023 2:43:05 PM PDT by Twotone
The Biden administration wants to make it difficult for future Republican presidents to decrease the size of the federal bureaucracy.
What is the background?
Most career federal civil servants are competitive service employees hired under a merit-based system typical of the nongovernment marketplace. They receive tremendous employee rights against demotion or termination.
Excepted service employees, on the other hand, work jobs requiring specialized qualifications or skills, such as in law enforcement, intelligence, science, and the law. However, excepted employees do not receive the same job protections as their competitive service counterparts unless they meet strict criteria.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a new job category for federal employees: Schedule F. The new category would have applied to excepted employees whose job exerted any influence over policy. The directive would have essentially made these employee's "at will," and thus would have stripped them of their civil service protections. In theory, it would have made such employees easy to fire.
President Joe Biden rescinded the executive order after taking office.
What is the Biden admin proposing?
The Office of Personnel Management issued a rule proposal on Friday to give federal employees more protections and to rebuff future attempts at slashing the size of the federal workforce.
The new rule stipulates that any federal employee shifted from the competitive service to the excepted service will keep "the status and civil service protections they had already accrued." The rule also clarifies the definition of which employees have influence over policy to mean "noncareer, political appointments."
In a press release, OPM directly cited the Trump administration as motivation for now taking action to protect federal bureaucrats.
"The previous Administration issued an executive order to alter the long-standing system that ensures that decisions to hire and fire career civil servants are based on merit and not loyalty to the President," the agency claimed.
The rule proposal comes as Republican presidential candidates promise to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy — comprising more than 2.2 million employees, according to OPM — if they win the White House.
Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, promises to slash more than 1 million jobs and ultimately 75% of the federal workforce over four years, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he will begin cutting jobs on day one of his presidency.
Anything else?
According to FedSmith, the "OPM proposal is obviously about politics and political power." Indeed, poorly performing civil employees are notoriously difficult to demote or terminate. Moreover, civil service employees are supposed to be nonpartisan, but there is a strong perception that a significant number are not.
Should it be difficult to remove overly partisan career employees? That's a question that remains open for debate. But make no doubt about it: the Biden administration is working hard to ensure that partisan and poorly performing employees remain difficult to remove.
Would have been nice if our Republican president made it extremely difficult to expand the federal government. Lol. The republicans are almost worst as making it larger.
I don’t give a crap about government employees. They are worthless and undeserving of individual demotion or firing. You shutter entire agencies to get rid of these lazy ass scumbags.
Surely, any rule made unilaterally by the Regine can be undone just the same.
They did in 1788/1789, when they wrote Article 1 Section 8, and listed the ONLY 12-15 things the federal government was delegated to be able to do.
Around 1871, things changed, and the Uniparty completely ignored that section.
We will never vote our way out of this.
What a completely mindless, blanket condemnation. You’re condemning millions of individuals of whom you know nothing personally.
OK Glowie.
Permanent DC is attempting to secure their strangle-hold on the country. No surprise that Biden would be on board. He’s their puppet, after all.
Sure you can. All you have to do is Vote Hardertm.
Kool, let them either die, starve or go work somewhere where I don't have to pay them. Any of those will work.
Almost all are low-performing, completely useless pieces of fed.gov union $**t. Some are dangerous. Only 1% of them are even supposed to be there.
I would argue that Trump has already slashed the Federal workforce as the government buildings in DC are predominantly abandoned. And no they aren’t all working from home.
Sad state of affairs.
I care about my country first. The best thing for our country is these lazy ass pieces of chit were unemployed. Perhaps then they would be forced to get real jobs in the private sector and build something. My opinion of them would radically change about them. As it stands now, they are the problem.
I’ve worked for both the State of Wisconsin and the Federal Government.
It is ALREADY nearly impossible to get rid of the dead weight both are saddled with!
Save us, Obi-Wan Trump! You’re our only hope!
Yep, and thank you to Kelly Brady (aka, "Nancy Drew") and Richard Citizen Journalist, reporting on the situation in foreign-occupied city-state Washington D.C.
This is where Derek Johnson is doing a bang-up job, explaining about Continuance of Government (COG) and Patel Patriot about Devolution.
The Office of Personnel Management issued a rule proposal on Friday to give federal employees more protections and to rebuff future attempts at slashing the size of the federal workforce”
So the bureaucracy writes a rule to perpetuate itself?
How democratic of them. Wonder if they would deign to let Congress have a say in this. Perhaps they will just dismiss the Congress as impudent.
Absolutely!
The way I see it is if the Congress defunds these agencies where these employees were formerly working there is no longer a reason for them to be on the Taxpayers dime.
Congress should start closing these agencies now.
Or we will be Bankrupt.
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