Comment by runako
3 months ago
> but this implementation has been haphazard (at best).
Also, this doesn't save us any money at all. Congress allocates money and in many cases specifies employment levels. But like the OMB memo says -- taxpayers still have to spend the money for these employees whether they do any work or not.
The reason they are doing this haphazard mess is that their positions are not popular and therefore cannot pass in Congress.
> Also, this doesn't save us any money at all. Congress allocates money and in many cases specifies employment levels.
Hmmm… this is short-term correct (at a minimum), but may not be correct long term. Time will tell.
Yes, the money for current jobs has been allocated/budgeted for the fiscal year, and the folks who resign will actually be paid for not working until the end of the fiscal year.
This is standard buyout stuff, and the government does this every year on a smaller scale, usually targeting high-paid, low productivity employees who are eligible to retire.
That said, what happens next fiscal year? The speculation is that the default will be that the positions vacated will basically be lost — as in, the slot/allocation will no longer exist and will not get funded. I imagine exceptions will exist, but this will create a noticeable reduction in the federal workforce if it ends up this way.
Said another way, paying 8 months for no work is cheaper than paying for 5-10 years of unneeded/inefficient work (at least that’s the theory).
> The reason they are doing this haphazard mess is that their positions are not popular and therefore cannot pass in Congress.
As I mentioned above, I think there is broad support on both sides for cutting and/or right-sizing the federal workforce.
Anyone who has worked in or with the federal government knows about instances of gratuitous headcount growth and substantial underemployment in some areas. There exist grifters who maybe put in 10 hours a week on average of very mediocre work for a salary that they absolutely could not earn outside of the government.
These same people also know about areas of the government that are grossly understaffed, seemingly in perpetuity (ATCs, contracting, etc.) and/or extremely underpaid (e.g., anything in tech).
I think it would be trivially easy to get broad support in Congress to implement changes that fix these problems, but that fix doesn’t start with a hastily written “fork you” all-hands e-mail.
All that said, all of this gratuitous motion is basically a drop in the bucket compared to modest and reasonable changes that could be made in social security, Medicare/medicaid, and/or defense spending.
You are correct that done deliberately, this could show the lack of need for some roles. But as it is structured, it is designed to get the best folks to leave, and from unpredictable parts of the org and thus is unlikely to show that result.
I think both sides are aligned in the desire to reduce the size of government. (Which has been steadily declining relative to the size of the population/economy for something like 4 decades.)
However, the administration is not pushing for right-sizing the workforce. They are proposing deeply unpopular cuts to things Americans actually value, without any debate or discussion of tradeoffs.
> But as it is structured, it is designed to get the best folks to leave, and from unpredictable parts of the org and thus is unlikely to show that result.
I believe that this is largely how this round will turn out. The numbers look very low so far (20k?).
> the administration is not pushing for right-sizing the workforce. They are proposing deeply unpopular cuts to things Americans actually value, without any debate or discussion of tradeoffs.
Just to be clear, I agree with all of this.
As I mentioned above, this is an absolute shit show. If chaos ensues, I think that will be seen as a success by those making the top-level decisions.
Our system of checks and balances is completely broken right now, and the limits are being tested by a group of folks who have no concept of noblesse oblige.
The results will be interesting.
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