“The career bureaucrats cannot be “purged.””
True but they can be assigned to meaningless drudge work.
They stay on the payroll and you have one less productive employee. And there are legal remedies that are available to the employee to challenge any reassignment or change in duties.
There are two kinds of federal employees: Those who have rank determined by position and those with rank in person. Those with rank in person have an up or out system.