If long-term gain is broadly what they want, and a shock to the system is how they want to get it, firing term appointees, those hired under special authorities, and those recently hired is a terrible way to do it. What you’ll be left with is the employees who’ve been there the longest and have the most invested in the system as it stands…. If Elon and Vivek want a leaner, healthier civil service, increasing the ratio of procedure fetishists to problem solvers is a very bad start.
No one talks about this, but civil servants want civil service reform. I can’t back that up with stats, only with my own experience of hearing never-ending complaints from both new government recruits and long-timers. It’s awful to join a team for the mission, only to find yourself and your teammates dragged down by folks who can’t or won’t do the job. I’ve talked before about how that’s pushed at least one public servant I know towards Trump, but I hear the same complaint from my former colleagues from the Obama administration. One texted me the other day that he’d been told by his HR manager not to give his poor performers low ratings — it created too much risk for the agency.
When public servants talk about employees caught watching porn on their computers all day, like the one at the EPA, they speak with outrage. But civil service reform has been off the table when Dems are in charge (and is miles from the table in blue-run states like California) because the unions block it. The position of the unions doesn’t match what government employees I talk to actually want — not in the least. With a Republican trifecta, it should be on the table. And Musk and Vivek should be its champions.
I get it. “We will work with Congress, the White House, and the public sector unions to enact meaningful civil service reform that allows for hiring on the basis of skills and holding underperformers accountable” doesn’t sound exciting or bold. “We will fire half the workforce” does. But what they’d get with the latter is not what they want. The backlash would be swift and devastating. It’s the former that would leave a lasting legacy, one the American public would thank them for.
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