Posted on 12/18/2016 1:27:51 PM PST by billorites
I will not be the first to point out the clear signal sent by President-elect Trump with many of his cabinet appointments of an intent to reverse major policies of the Obama administration in many areas. To consider just a few examples:
So, when the new guys at the top come in, can they just turn these agencies around and start with new policies? If you read the Constitution, the answer would seem to be, of course they can! (Article II, Section 1: "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.") But realists will recognize that there are only a handful of political appointees at the top of each department or agency, while the thousands of "permanent" or "career" employees are protected against firing by civil service laws. And somehow these people think that, while the political appointees come and go, the career employees are the ones who really run the place.
How bad will be the resistance to change? We got a preliminary indication a couple of days ago after the Trump "landing team" for the Energy Department sent a 74-part informational questionnaire to the department. One of the areas of inquiry was a request for the names of department staffers who had worked on "climate change" programs. Does that request seem reasonable to you? It did not seem reasonable to the current DOE or its staffers. They have "rejected" these requests for information. From The Hill on December 13:
The Department of Energy said Tuesday it will reject the request by President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team to name staffers who worked on climate change programs. Energy spokesman Eben Burnhan-Snyder said the agency received “significant feedback” from workers regarding a questionnaire from the transition team that leaked last week. “Some of the questions asked left many in our workforce unsettled,” Snyder said.
Well, I guess that's how it works in the Federal Government: If the requests of your new boss make you "unsettled," you just "reject" them. And if that's how they react to a simple request for information as to who is doing what, imagine how they are going to react when they actually get an assignment to do something that runs counter to what they think should be done!
The article in The Hill goes on to quote from the employees' union boss, articulating the view that there is nothing political about this, and the staffers are just neutral, a-political experts trying to go about their jobs:
“My members are upset and have questions about what this means. These are all civil servants who do their jobs,” Tony Reardon, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement. “They have no wish to be caught up in political winds — they are nonpartisan employees — scientists, engineers, statisticians, economists and financial experts — who were hired for their knowledge and they bring their talent and experience to the job every day,” he said, adding that the union “will do all it can to ensure that merit system rules are followed.”
Actually, no. There is absolutely nothing "nonpartisan" about this. The Department of Energy is substantially if not entirely engaged in carrying out policies that are favored by Democrats and opposed by Republicans -- policies like promoting and subsidizing wind and solar energy and hamstringing and restricting fossil fuels. Do you think that even the Energy Information Agency is nonpartisan? Don't be ridiculous. Their "levelized cost of energy" reports are carefully engineered to defraud the American people into supporting "renewable" energy by downplaying the real costs of wind and solar energy by a factor of five or ten or more. The same overt or covert partisanship is equally if not more true at Education, HUD, EPA, and, for that matter, throughout the government.
How bad is the partisanship in the government? Surely, you say, there must be at least a few Republicans in the government who can be counted on to keep things fair! If you think that, you are deluding yourself. Analyze the election results from the District of Columbia, and you come away realizing that virtually every single person who works for the federal government is a Democrat.
Here are the presidential results from the District of Columbia. Hillary Clinton got 90.9% of the votes, a percentage far higher than her percent in any of the fifty states. (Her highest percentage in any of the states was in Hawaii at 62.3%.) Donald Trump and Gary Johnson between them won just 5.7% of the votes in D.C., about 17,600 votes in total. But think about this: Washington has a substantial Republican establishment. The RNC is headquartered in DC. The Republicans held substantial majorities in both the House and Senate before the recent election, and the Republican members of Congress plus their committees had something in the range of 4000 staffers based in the District. And those people have families. And there is a substantial group of Republican, conservative and libertarian think tanks and policy organizations based in D.C. -- as examples, consider the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Federalist Society, and so forth. And their staffers also have families. Add up all the professional and paid Republican and conservative-side people in Washington and their families, and you have accounted for literally every Republican vote in the District. The number of Republicans actually working in the government has to be so small that you will need a microscope to find them.
And yes, it is absolutely reasonable to expect that every single one of the government employees regards Trump and his people as illegitimate interlopers, and those employees will do everything in their power to hinder and obstruct any agenda of reform.
So, what to do about it? The obvious first answer is, fire these people and hire new ones who will do your bidding. Unfortunately, that is likely to be a poor answer. The so-called "civil service" protections for career federal employees go back to the 1880s. Do they violate the constitutional provision that vests all executive authority in the President? I would say they do, but you could litigate that issue for the entire next four years without getting any definitive result and without getting rid of a single person. You might even lose outright.
So here's the modest proposal: If the government cannot fire these people, then it can assign them to other tasks in other places. By fortuitous coincidence, the recent several years have seen downsizing in two sectors known for having very large buildings, many of them located in remote and out-of-the-way areas. Those two sectors are manufacturing and retail. Places like rural Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Arkansas, and upstate New York -- not to mention northern Maine, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and even Alaska -- are littered with abandoned K-Marts, JC Penney's and Sears stores, as well as abandoned factories of all sorts. These buildings can be leased for a song. Hundreds of federal employees can be assigned to each such location.
Send each such employee a memo: "Starting Monday morning at 9 AM, your job will be located at the former Sears Hometown store, 2308 11th Avenue West, Williston, North Dakota. If you report for work, you will await such assignments as may be given to you at that location. If you do not show up, your pay will be continued until your unused vacation and sick leave are exhausted, and then your pay will stop."
Inside the former Sears or K-Mart, there can be row upon row of hundreds of desks and chairs. But I highly recommend that these employees not be provided with any computer or cell phone at taxpayer expense. Why waste the money? They can communicate with headquarters in Washington by U.S. mail. It's not like they are doing anything productive.
Something tells me that the incoming Trump team will stop short of adopting my proposal. But they should adopt it. For the next four years, essentially every federal employee in Washington is going to be conducting an unrelenting guerilla campaign to undermine everything the administration wants to do. If the administration only pushes back a little, it will be steamrolled by the permanent government Blob. Time to act decisively! If anyone can do that, it is Trump.
UPDATE, December 16: The normally sensible Megan McArdle at Bloomberg View comments on the Trump transition team questionnaire to the Department of Energy (asking for names of DOE employees working on "climate change" matters) as follows:
[The Department of Energy] should not comply with this request unless some law requires it. This request reeks of witch-hunting people because they might have views on climate change that our president-elect, or someone on his staff, dislike. That is no way to run an organization, or a nation.
What? The incoming administration has an absolute right to find out who is working on what, and to re-direct people from working on Project A to Project B. Career employees have no "right" to continue to spend taxpayer resources on projects that the newly elected representatives of the people do not want done. How is this a "witch hunt"? If the new people do not find out who is working on Project A, and stop that work, and direct the effort over to Project B, then they are not doing their job.
If the employees don’t want to follow direction from the new management, the House can de-fund the whole agency, or any part of it. That would probably get their attention. But abolishing it works, too. None of these agencies is essential. Actually they’re all harmful, and these areas are none of the Federal government’s business.
Well, the transition team does not yet have the authority to get information or to transfer resources. It will be interesting when they do have that authority. The Civil Service laws have been a problems for decades. Anyone know what can be done by Trump to break through this barrier? I mean, he’s dealt with unions for decades.
Sounds interesting. Get it to Trump!
I have previously encountered this ‘send them all to Alaska’ suggestion here on FR and I still love the idea.
Most Fed.Govt. employees are over paid,not accountable
E because of unions. They buy their way by giving to Democrats.All Federal programs are loaded with waste and fraud and this has been proven time and time again. Just ask yourself how the IRS got away targeting Tea-party members and nothing done about it. Ask how the largest tax cheat in American history wax pardoned by Bill Clinton. Follow the money and corruption.
We have long needed a real executive like trump as Chief Executive. If he can just start to drain the swamp in these and other liberal fiefdoms, and keep us safe, of course, it will be a successful Presidency.
Why stop at Alaska. At least some of the leeches are stationed oversees and enjoy being there. I suspect Putin can find some unused space in Siberia for them.
Send each such employee a memo: “Starting Monday morning at 9 AM, your job will be located at the former Sears Hometown store, 2308 11th Avenue West, Williston, North Dakota. If you report for work, you will await such assignments as may be given to you at that location. If you do not show up, your pay will be continued until your unused vacation and sick leave are exhausted, and then your pay will stop.”
Inside the former Sears or K-Mart, there can be row upon row of hundreds of desks and chairs. But I highly recommend that these employees not be provided with any computer or cell phone at taxpayer expense. Why waste the money? They can communicate with headquarters in Washington by U.S. mail. It’s not like they are doing anything productive.
I was in the Civil Service for over 25 years (some active duty time before that) and I retired out of the system.
Here are some suggestions that would move in the direction that you are considering, which I believe would be legal.
1. Use the laws written by Congress that explain the purpose of each agency. They have been abused by these agencies for decades. Call the agency execs to heel by telling them they have exceeded their authority, and that they must obey the law. As head of the agency, that is completely legal. Each agency should have a mission or “prime directive”. They can be rewritten to reflect the new President’s priorities.
For example, the EPA has traditionally given the barest lip service to cost benefit ratios. The costs are routinely understated; the benefits pure fantasy. That can be critiqued and punished. It would lead to a lot of retirements. Maybe even resignations.
Do not cut back on salaries or benefits. Those are by law. But there are many things that are budgeted for that are not required each year. “Studies” can be canceled. Enforcement can be cut back. That is exactly what Obama did with Immigration laws and customs. Rejecting work product as unsatisfactory and requiring it to be done over is a common and valid management practice. Travel can be cut to nothing very easily. Cell phones can be cut off.
Having outside “experts” examine agencies and sub-units to recommend savings and reorganizations, is another common tactic.
Requiring work products that the employees do not want to do, and may even seem counter productive, is completely legal and a management tool.
There are always some in each agencies who see stupidity and mismanagement and are waiting for a chance to correct problems. Find these people, use them, promote them, let them know you expect results. Ambition conquers a great deal.
Something that has become common in the last decade has been mandatory online training. Everyone but top management hates it with a passion. It is a good way for top management to bypass all the middle levels and get their new philosophy out to the troops.
At the EPA, all employees could be required to read up on the science that debunks manmade climate change, and to pass tests on their comprehension of the material. The progressives have been requiring this on things like diversity, EEO, and every kind of politically correct subject for years. A positive example of this was a course on the Constitution, required in the DoD under President Dubya.
Mandatory online training can occupy employees almost as much as moving them to Alaska.
Just a few suggestions from a long term technocrat in the DoD.
Very thoughtful advice.
Fire them and offer them jobs as air traffic controllers...
Or you can just ban them for life from ever working in the givernment.
http://www.mspb.gov/ppp/ppp.htm after reading this I see the best response as to abolish the agencies. No reason to fire anyone, just lock the doors.
To reduce the size of government, the abolishment of entire agencies is the best way.
But it needs to be done by law, so President Trump would need the help of Congress.
I read as far as, “free Federal money...” and stopped wasting my time with the equivalent of kiddy porn.
While they may be burdened trying to fire all the bad ones, a RIF (reduction in force)) to go along with Trump’s hiring freeze may be just the ticket.
They may have gotten their knickers in a twist, but when Trump is President, he can fire them for not cooperating with his requests.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.