OP-ED: Firing of federal workers unconscionable
A number of opinions have been aired recently regarding the recent firing of federal government employees, spearheaded by Elon Musk and Donald Trump. As is often said, you can have your own opinions but not your own facts. Facts inoculate the rational mind from charlatans by teaching us to sort through misrepresentations, fears, and prejudices. Opinions should be informed by facts, but facts shouldn’t be informed by opinions. Conflating opinions with facts is treacherous territory but one the current administration prefers.
Here are some fundamental facts related to the recent federal employee firings:
– Musk, an unelected and unconfirmed Trump administration consultant who, coincidentally, was Trump’s largest campaign donor ($288 million), has overseen the firing of about 30,000 federal employees. Most were probationary (less than one year) employees who were fired simply because they had few employment protections in that first year. To enable this wave of firings, Trump also eliminated 17 inspectors general of the agencies that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) planned to ransack, which is currently being litigated. These prosecutors were the only independent offices within agencies designed to protect taxpayer money and root out corruption, fraud, waste, and mismanagement.
– Musk has gutted the congressionally instituted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), including its board of directors. Its mission is in its name: protecting consumers from fraud. This agency was set up to provide oversight to banks and other financial institutions to prevent an economic collapse like the one that occurred in 2008, which was caused by banks that made risky financial gambles with consumers’ money.
– Musk and DOGE – an agency established by Trump in direct conflict with Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution by bypassing Congress – canceled 2,300 federal agency contracts claiming to have saved the government $65 billion. As it turns out, 794 of 2,300 canceled contracts will save no money at all. The London-based newspaper, The Guardian, is now reporting that the contracts actually amounted to around $2 billion.
– During his first administration, Trump’s 2017 federal tax cut added $1.9 trillion to the national debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bulk of the cut (83%) went to the wealthy (1%) and corporations, and the remaining crumbs went to the rest of us. Did anyone reading this rush out and buy a new car or slap down the downpayment on a new house with the couple extra bucks that tax cut put in their pocket each week?
How do these facts play into the firing of the federal workers? Was it necessary? What will it accomplish?
Musk and Trump have, in the most slapdash way, gone after the next generation of young, energized workers ready to start their careers supporting our country. They are going after those who have no power to fight back. Every government agency, including the military, has procedures for effectively rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse and reducing the workforce to make it more efficient or respond to a reduction in funding from Congress. I have seen this play out several times during my 34-year federal government career.
The slash-and-burn approach by Trump and Musk pays no heed to agency efficiency and effectiveness or shows respect affected workers. In some cases, workers were rehired after it became stunningly obvious DOGE had no clue what impact their random firing would have. In one case, the administration scrambled to rehire hundreds of workers from the Department of Energy who oversee the nation’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. Musk’s thoughtless and arrogant reduction in force was so disturbing that it caused 21 DOGE team members to resign, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
So, what did Trump, the Republican Party, and Musk hope to accomplish with their mayhem? Their stated goal was to save the taxpayers money. So, let’s examine that.
DOGE’s goal is to save $2 trillion. There is no serious financial professional who believes that could happen without extreme measures that would crush the economy. Jessica Reidl, an economist and senior fellow at the conservative-leaning think tank, the Manhattan Institute, has said, “Saving $2 trillion would require eliminating nearly every remaining federal program.” Trump has said that Medicare and Medicaid wouldn’t be touched. However, with his support, the House budget that recently passed is bound for deep cuts to Medicaid.
Those budget cuts have profound implications for all folks residing in nursing homes and with health insurance fully or partially subsidized by Medicaid. Either your insurance premiums are going to jump, or you’re going to lose your insurance.
Other vital taxpayer-relied-upon services will be diminished as well. Tax returns will be processed more slowly. Fighting forest fires will be hampered. Financial fraud will become easier. Expect longer lines and fewer services in national parks.
The cuts won’t save you a dime unless you’re ultra-wealthy. They prey on short memories, and they are doing it again. This time, they are doubling down on the 2017 tax cuts and, according to CBO, will be adding $4.6 trillion to the national debt while claiming to offset the cost of their tax cuts for Trump and the billionaires with the reckless destruction of our government and tariffs on imported goods. The facts demonstrate the savings aren’t there. Who pays for tariffs? Not the country from which goods are imported. They pass it on to suppliers, who pass it on to you.
Trump promised everyone a check – your piece of all the savings that will be realized. Well, don’t count on it. The savings aren’t close to what was promised, and you should always read the fine print. If your taxable income is low enough, you’re not eligible.
Federal Reserve data indicates that the top 1% of households in the United States holds 30.9% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50% has 2.6%. If we wanted to make this country financially solvent, we would start making the ultra-wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes. Instead, we treat federal workers like dirt, disposable, wringing them dry. We allow true public servants to be abused by self-serving, supposed “public servants.”
What will our children think when, in the future, they look back and realize how we treated people? Will they look upon a society that took advantage of its vulnerable members, including those with genuine needs? What will be our spiritus mundi, the spirit of our society, our cultural values of this era? I pray that we find a higher ground than where we are headed.
Leroy Renninger is a resident of Chalk Hill.