Stop the Madness!

Now long retired, I spent my career in jobs focused on reducing waste and improving the performance of the federal government. I worked for many years at a nonpartisan agency dedicated to these goals (GAO) and continued with the same issues as a staffer on several congressional committees under both Republican and Democratic chairs.

I’m sickened by what’s being done these days in the name of government “reform.”

President Trump has apparently delegated virtually unbridled authority to Elon Musk, who seems clueless about how the federal government works and uninterested in learning but who is nonetheless eager to toy with it. Among other things, Musk is wreaking havoc on the federal workforce. His DOGE operation orchestrates massive firings in an arbitrary, ready-fire-aim way that lacks any strategic framework. (We are starting to see cleanup efforts to undo some of the mess.)

The vast majority of employees impacted by these firings are ordinary Americans, including many veterans, who perform their duties conscientiously.^[1]For example, 80 percent of federal employees work outside of the Washington metropolitan area and 30 percent are veterans. They do not make policy. They are not part of some “deep state” movement. They are not hostile to the public; on the contrary, many perform essential public services. They now find themselves out of work not because of any shortcomings on their part but because Musk et al. are trying to score political points. 

In addition to its unfairness and the human toll it exacts, Musk’s meat ax approach is wholly disingenuous as a “reform” project. Federal “bureaucrats” are convenient scapegoats for the many shortcomings of the federal government, but they exercise no inherent authority. They implement programs and activities enacted by Congress under the supervision and control of the political appointees who head their agencies. They often operate with antiquated management systems and processes that their political masters show no interest in updating. 

Musk’s blanket approach to downsizing fails to differentiate based on the importance of the work employees perform or the quality of their performance. His so-called  “fork in the road” initiative offered millions of federal employees eight months pay to do nothing if they agreed to deferred retirement. He patronizingly described it as a chance to “take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits.” Putting aside the many legal and practical issues the offer raised, imagine that most employees had accepted it. The result would have been government paralysis resulting in severe harm to the public in many areas.

His subsequent blanket, indiscriminate dismissal of probationary employees was more of the same. He targeted them not based on the importance or quality of their work but because they were easy to fire.

Downsizing federal employees per se without regard to what they do or how they do it is nonsensical as a government reform initiative. The federal workforce is about the same size as it was 50 years ago and has actually decreased as a percentage of the overall American workforce. If the objective of reform is to reduce government “bloat” and “waste,” the focus should be on first identifying those programs and activities that don’t serve important federal objectives and only then reducing or eliminating their funding and staff. But this is hard work that requires much analysis and means taking on powerful political constituencies. It’s far easier just to attack federal employees as a whole, who are less politically connected and more vulnerable.

If Musk really wants to highlight a group of underperforming federal workers, he should look to Capitol Hill. Congress is fundamentally dysfunctional. Its members have abdicated most of their legislative authority to the executive branch. They struggle to perform their most basic constitutional responsibility of appropriating funds to keep the government running. They distain meaningful oversight as a co-equal branch of government. Notably, the current congressional majorities turn a blind eye to the flood of dubious actions taken in just the first month of this Trump Administration, including Musk’s.

On top of this, most of the bloat and waste that plagues the federal government can be traced back to Congress. After all, Congress rather than bureaucrats created the agencies, programs, and activities that make up today’s massive, unwieldy, and excessive federal government.  Congress is also the most formidable barrier to reform. It has largely ignored or actively resisted a wide range of reform recommendations submitted to it (often repeatedly) by GAO, agency inspectors general, and others.  

Musk’s attacks on the federal workforce are all the more disappointing because they distract from so many real reform opportunities. Musk and DOGE benefit from a level of visibility and cachet with the president unique in the history of government reform. They are ideally positioned to be a catalyst to force action on a host of serious reform recommendations that would save billions of taxpayer dollars and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government. These recommendations have languished for years due to lack of interest or political will to act on them by decision-makers in the executive branch and Congress. Musk and his band of tech bros could also be effective in addressing IT issues that lie at the heart of many federal performance problems—a task that plays to their strengths.

To borrow his phrase, Musk and DOGE face their own “fork in the road.” They can continue their mindless attacks on federal employees, along with their grandstanding on other fronts–e.g., playing the familiar game of cherry picking isolated examples of silly federal expenditures; claiming to “uncover” problems already documented by GAO and IGs; portraying computer programming glitches as evidence of fraud. Or they can take up the large body of existing work that provides a roadmap to needed reforms, add contributions based on their own expertise, and use their immense influence to actually achieve great results for the American people.