Trump vs. the Bureaucracy

Trump is the first president in living memory to actually cut the federal work force.

Reagan tried. Reagan failed.

Trump actually delivered.

He also worked assiduously to make the President the boss of his underling bureaucrats, instead of the bureaucrats being the President's boss.

What a concept. The boss sets policy and tells the subordinate paper-pushers what to do?

That's a #ThreatToDemocracy.

Ben Weingarten:

Although Trump is often described as an impulsive, undisciplined leader, he has remained sharply focused on advancing reforms aimed at increasing presidential power over the unelected federal bureaucracy. RealClearInvestigations' review of dozens of executive actions and agency regulations found that the Trump administration has taken historic steps to shrink the branch of government he runs, make agencies more accountable to elected officials, and reduce Washington's regulatory control over the private sector.,,,

These efforts have reduced the federal workforce to levels unseen since the 1960s and generated hundreds of billions of dollars in cost savings. They have also produced Supreme Court rulings affirming presidential authority to remove subordinates and rein in independent agencies, along with deregulatory savings estimated at trillions of dollars.

"From almost the first day of the president's second term, the administration has been at work in the most extensive project since the New Deal to recapture for the elected branches what has been given away over many decades to the permanent bureaucratic class," Hillsdale College professor Ronald J. Pestritto wrote in a monograph lauding the president's initiatives late last year.

Of course, the Democrats want to undo all this. They want to rehire all the unneeded clock-watching do-nothings and of course all the unqualified DEI make-work check-cashers and they want to pour American tax dollars into US AID and all the other corrupt communist NGOs.

"We have a massive reconstruction task ahead of us," Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has warned. "We will have to go department by department, subject by subject, and public purpose by public purpose to determine what we salvage and what we re-create."

Although Democrats will control both chambers of Congress next year, the center of gravity of their resistance will likely continue to be in the courthouses where they have challenged the president's agenda, alleging unconstitutional overreach and procedural ham-handedness. Through hundreds of lawsuits, many still pending, they have opposed everything from firing employees and eliminating offices to withholding appropriated funds.

Legal scholars say these battles over the scope and contours of presidential authority and the Constitution's separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches may have significant long-term ramifications. They also note that litigation moves slowly; many cases are not likely to be resolved until Trump leaves office. As a practical matter, often buoyed by a Supreme Court that has blocked lower court injunctions thwarting Trump's orders, the president has meaningfully reshaped the bureaucracy....

Shrinking the workforce

From the start of his second term, President Trump vowed to "dramatically reduce the size of the Federal Government, while increasing its accountability to the American people."

Through a series of executive orders, he froze federal hiring across most agencies, directed the Department of Government Efficiency to help cut the federal workforce through deferred resignation programs and reductions in force (RIFs), and required agencies to hire no more than one employee for every four departing employees. During its first year, the administration has shrunk the workforce by 220,000 to 250,000 workers -- a 10% decline. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a critic of the cuts, described them as "the largest one-year reduction in the federal workforce in over 75 years, dating back to the demobilization following World War II."

The decline has not been evenly distributed. The Center's analysis indicates that Trump has targeted executive branch departments whose work he questions. These include the Department of Education (down 39%), the State Department and associated agencies (down 37%), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (down 23%). His policies have also sparked mass exoduses from specific areas like the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Conservatives have long considered the division a bastion of progressive activism. Up to 80% of its staff reportedly left. The administration has replaced those 300 departing employees with 130 hires of its own.

The workforce continued to decline modestly in 2026. In all, about one in five federal workers has left through resignation, retirement, or dismissal during Trump's second term -- though about half that number has been replaced. At roughly 2.7 million employees, the federal workforce has fallen to its lowest level since 1966.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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