12.27.2016
‘You’re fired’: How Trump can reduce the federal workforce and drain the swamp
Because there is another more practical, political problem for Trump, and that is that after 8 years, the current 1.3 million non-defense civilian federal workforce is currently staffed with loyalists to President Barack Obama, who may not wish to implement Trump administration policies and may even seek to undermine the President-elect.
On his way out, Obama created an avenue for a small number of political appointees to rehired on the career side to burrow them into the workforce — called conversions. He also changed civil service rules to make it easier to hire federal employees outside of the traditional http://USAjobs.gov system. So, how to drain the swamp?
Federal rules make it extremely difficult to fire anybody in the civil service, a process that can take up to two years, even when there is cause like, say, only showing up to work one-third of the time. The federal employee unions get involved, and the whole thing is a mess. That said, federal managers attempting to deal with problem employees had best get started on day one. But one additional step that could be taken would be to reform civil service laws to make it easier to fire career federal employees, legislation that would need to be taken up by Congress, such as proposed by U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) likely to cause a major fight.
Another idea is to incentivize early retirement through financially lucrative, limited-time-only buy-outs. This would be accomplished via a one-time appropriation by Congress in the next continuing resolution — due on April 28, 2017 — reducing the amount of time served and the eligible retirement age on a temporary basis. The program could be administered by the Office of Personnel Management, with enough funds to facilitate the buy-outs, which would need to be big enough to promote early retirement.
More immediately, in the next continuing resolution, Congress could simply defund the personnel budgets of non-defense civilian departments and agencies, forcing an immediate 10 to 20 percent reduction in the workforce. Specifically, this would be done by taking last year’s enacted full-time equivalent number for each department, agency and office, and then cutting it by 10 to 20 percent. Also, it would be necessary to defund existing preferences under federal rules being given to those laid off being later rehired on a first-in-line basis. This latter part is essential, because otherwise, the Obama personnel who were just laid off will be the first to be rehired when positions need to be filled.
Read at: http://netrightdaily.com/2016/12/youre-fired-trump-can-reduce-federal-workforce-drain-swamp/
None of that is possible until the weasels are removed from Congress by we the people.
We took out Cantor and no one else followed our example.