I wonder what it is like to be a federal employee right now? I spent half my career as a federal employee – active-duty military, federal civilian employee, and presidential appointee.
I spent the other half in the private sector. The greatest part of my private sector work has been as a federal government contractor. I have been involved in government from the inside and from the outside.
What I have never seen in the last 50 years is federal employees being treated like a commodity. Their existence is solely associated with a cost, and the elimination of that cost is all-important. It is not whether the individual employees are doing an excellent job or a bad job, but simply the fact that they exist appears to be objectionable to a certain element of the population.
What some employees have spent their careers doing is no longer important. Their belief in the mission they had sworn to complete is suddenly of no value. For many, it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under them.
In the past, there have been downsizings and RIFs. These were based on budget and were surgically precise in the implementation, with the intent being quite often to save as many employees as possible.
Probationary employees were the future of an agency. Elimination of probationary employees as a class has been unheard of until now. To a certain extent, new employees who bring new life to an Agency can change the trajectory for the future success of the critical missions’ agencies perform.
Making a large swath of the civilian service subject to termination at will can lead to the politicization of the civil service. Employees will not have to worry about whether their performance meets their performance standards, but whether their decision-making passes political muster, irrespective of whether the decision made complies with the law.
All of this is new.
Is the federal government too large? It is too large when there is not adequate money coming in to pay the government’s bills.
When an individual has a financial shortfall, they usually have two choices or a combination of the two. They cut their costs or increase their income. Congress has these two choices, just like you and I would have if our personal budget was out of whack.
However, here is the rub. The government, through Congress and Presidential Administrations, has, over the years, chosen to decrease revenue and, in some cases, to decrease costs because of the shortfall in revenue.
Everyone likes a tax cut, but usually no one likes to lose their government services or entitlements. To a Congress that is looking for ways to cut taxes for individuals and corporations and maintain a semblance of fiscal integrity, the elimination of federal employees and government services is a pot of gold waiting to be plundered.
No one can rationally argue with the need for efforts to reduce the cost of government. Congress absolutely spends more than it takes in. On the one hand, it takes in less because of the tax structure currently in existence. However, reducing the effectiveness of the Agency with responsibility for collecting revenue impacts the amount of revenue taken in. This reduction of the tax collection agency is, in effect, another tax cut. However, this tax cut would go to the higher-income taxpayer who has more to worry about when tax time comes and is better able to fight the reduced forces of the tax enforcer.
Since increasing individual and corporate taxes can be politically dynamite, few Administrations or Congresses have undertaken to do that. For the tax structure to reward certain individuals and corporations and not incur greater deficits because increasing taxes is out of the question, the government must reduce its costs by eliminating services. Unfortunately, the people who require the most services from the government are the ones who are the poorest and the least represented.
Here we get back to the federal employees. It is easy for Congress to go along with all the cuts to federal employment and government services when their fingerprints are not on those decisions. There is this outside group making these decisions, which, under the Constitution, are theoretically Congress’s to make. However, they can say they just agreed with the President, irrespective of their oversight responsibilities.
People used to say that if they were fed up with the government, they would move to Canada. Well, that may be problematic. People there are not too hospitable to Americans right now.
Federal employees will do what federal employees have always done in tough times. They will hunker down and wait for this all to pass. Unfortunately, it is anyone’s guess what the government will look like should there ever be a new Administration or a new Congress.
