Posted on 06/09/2004 11:24:13 PM PDT by goldstategop
Fire some government employees
Joseph Farah
This week, nearly everyone is paying tribute to the late President Ronald Reagan – from Bill Clinton to John Kerry to Jimmy Carter.
But words are not enough for the Gipper.
If we really want to honor the man of principle, the man who cared deeply about the issues of the day and the man who believed in actions, not just words, we should pay tribute by learning from his example and enacting policies that will strengthen his legacy in American history.
I have an idea.
Let's fire some federal government employees.
Let's not just give them a day off Friday.
Let's remove them from the payrolls permanently.
One of Reagan's most controversial – and effective – actions as president was to fire air-traffic controllers who went out on strike illegally and threatened the security of America's traveling public. It was a bold move. And like so many bold moves of the Reagan administration, it never had to be repeated. People learned Reagan meant business.
But our problem in federal employment goes much deeper than the occasional extortion attempt by workers.
There is simply no accountability for government employees. Once they have a job, it's practically a job for life. Almost no one ever gets fired from a federal government job. The statistics are staggering.
According to the Office of Personnel Management, only one in 5,000 non-defense workers get fired annually for poor performance.
From 1984 through 2001 – a period of 17 years – of 28,000 employees in the State Department, only six were fired for poor performance. Yet, I think we could safely eliminate the entire department and not lose a step as a nation.
Only one person was fired from the entire Education Department in 2001. Only two were fired in the entire Transportation Department that year. Only two were fired from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In all the federal bureaucracies combined in 2001, only 434 employees were fired – and that was higher than the annual average. That 434 figure represents a negligible 0.02 percent of all federal government employees.
Not only does it take heroic action by managers to fire federal employees, there are also hardly any incentives for good performance.
A study by OPM concluded that "the federal white-collar pay system sends and reinforces the message that performance does not matter."
There is bipartisan agreement that this firing rate is bad policy. President Bush's administration wants to make it easier to get rid of bad employees. When Al Gore was reinventing government as vice president, he, too, sought to "reduce by half the time required to terminate federal managers and employees for cause."
According to a Cato Institute study in 2002, most managers just try to work around bad employees or try to reassign them to other groups. OPM surveys consistently find that managers think "procedures dealing with poor performance are too complicated, time consuming, or onerous."
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could seize on the bipartisan political camaraderie in Washington this week to institutionalize some real fundamental changes? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we paid tribute to Ronald Reagan in a meaningful way? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we actually tamed the beast of the federal government the way the late president envisioned?
By the way, President Bush doesn't need congressional action to make such changes in the executive branch of government. He can do that with a stroke of the pen. That's what executive orders are legitimately defined to do. While executive orders have been misused by other presidents to hijack legislative authority, they can be legitimately used to change the way the executive branch does business.
President Bush can create a great memoriam for Ronald Reagan with a stroke of the pen – one that will do what the late great America leader strived to do in his tenure in the White House: curtail abuse of taxpayers, make the government more accountable and responsive to the people and bring some common sense to Washington.
Oh yeah, doing that in an election year won't feed the Democrats an issue at all LOL.
After re-election, I would suggest they NOT replace retiring workers for a while and that they reorganize the waste out of different departments.
That is how you reduce the load, budget and get better government in the process as I see it.
Let the Democrats scream we need more bureaucrats on the job. President Bush's response after firing the bums, ought to be, they serve the American people not the other away around and its time to win one for the Gipper. The public will love it!
The REAL scandal also includes the number of employees who have little or nothing to do with the purpose of their agencies. I actually once met an "architectural historian" who worked for a land use agency!
Not the way to get that done.
What you do is say you will NOT fire current employees, but will be reorganizing the various functions and wont be replacing retired workers for a while.
You have to figure about 3-5% of government workers retire a year. Do that for 2-3 years and you get a substantial result that the general public can warm up to and that Democrats cant use very well against the President in the future.
GW ain't no good ol' boy.
Wrong !
They have a law and a union that protects them so this is why they don't get fired. If they don't perform they have to be retrained into another Gov't job at the same GS Level!
It's what we need to do. Just limit spending to 2% of an increase for a few years and we could even balance the budget fairly soon.
You wouldn't believe how many Equal Opportunity Officers work for the federal government. They get paid a lot for what they do. From what I've seen they make sure that every workplace is full of posters and bulletin boards that celebrate everyone except white male heterosexuals. They also give propaganda classes and field complaints from lazy incompetent people who claim to be discriminated against
This vaunted, all-powerful union with which people seem obsessed does not exist for many federal employees. For instance, my agency has no union. At other agencies, the collective bargaining agreement does not cover certain employees.
Where they exist, the unions can be a pain, but a lot of times the "inability" to fire federal employees has more to do with managers' feet of clay, poor documentation, and agency attorneys' and or senior management's unwillingness to back the manager who wants to fire the employee.
Getting fired for performance or conduct reasons does not
entitle you to another job. Employees who are separated through no fault of their own, e.g. lack of agency funding, personnel cuts, etc., may be entitled to other positions, but some of that has to do with the government's desire to avoid paying severance pay.
I'm not going to deny there are problems, and they need to be resolved because we're taking about the taxpayers' money. However, "just firing a bunch of people" will open up the federal government to costs and litigation that would astound you.
If you want to reduce the size of government, change the laws and regulations first. Just firing people will not fix problems any more than it did when I was in the private sector.
"A study by OPM concluded that "the federal white-collar pay system sends and reinforces the message that performance does not matter.""
Democrats aspire to mediocrity.
Since I am a GS employee I can speak from inside. Oh by the way, I am on an authorized day of vacation today, not doing this from work on "your" time.
I agree with you 100%! When I first left the Army and started as a civil service worker I had a co-worker who was defrauding the government out of money hand over fist. As a case in point: We were to travel to a meeting in Daytona Beach (tough, but someone had to do it - actually the contractor we were visiting, General Electric, was located there) on a Tuesday. He left here the previous Thursday, drove down in his car towing his boat and collecting mileage. I flew in a Monday night, attended the meeting on Tuesday and came back home late Tuesday night and then to work at 7:00 AM on Wednesday. He did not show up back here until the following Monday.
I filed a complaint with the local inspector general office. They turned it over the military police CID office. I was questioned and had to lay out a time table for the investigator. When nothing happened I questioned the CID about it. I was told the case was closed as his immediate supervisor, a Army LTC, said he would take administrative actions. What were they? Nothing - the reason, the LTC was with him on the entire trip. Talk about an incestious relationship!
I do not like to pat myself on the back, but integrity is the name of the game. I like to pride myself into saying I collect an honest days wages for an honest days work.
Thanks for letting me vent a little.
I haven't seen ANY evidence that W favors smaller government. This is a nice suggestion, but it's a dream that probably won't happen until we get a conservative elected.
Also, if a worker smoked they were allowed by union agreement a 10 minute smoke break outside the building. Now here's the kicker - if said employee 'suffered' from claustrophobia they were allowed to walk up&down the stairs BUT if said employee worked on say the 7th FLOOR, that 10 minute break turned into a half an hour! AND they were allowed as MANY breaks as they wanted because smoking was a 'listed medical addition'. As such, these mopes NEVER frickin worked!
This building had over three thousand full time 'employees' and were covered by ten different unions. However during the gubmint shut-down of '95 the work was handled by about 500 HUNDRED 'managers'. Nothing suffered, nada. The other 2500 were non-essential flotsam!
I have also attended meetings with federal agencies, as a guest, and I was impressed by the money they spend for extras such as the best food in the most expensive restaurants and extended stays in five-star hotels. All I could see was my taxes disappearing.
Ummmm...Bush proposed that in 2001...
August 26, 2001 - President Bush Saturday rolled out a government plan that could shrink the 1.8 million-strong federal civilian workforce through $25,000 employee buyouts, early retirement incentives and increased competition between the private sector and federal employees to deliver services.
But according to Thomas Registry, it went to Committee and never was passed by Congress. A copy of the bill text can be found by typing Freedom to Manage in the search query box here. Sorry I can't post a more direct link, I have found that the query links at TR do not last very long.
"A study by OPM concluded that "the federal white-collar pay system sends and reinforces the message that performance does not matter.""
And yet OPM administers the rules that maintain the status quo. OPM reports are nice, but their follow-through on correcting things isn't always great. They've come up with a lot of ways to speed up the hiring process, but heaven help an agency that violates the rules about vet preference, rule of 3 etc.
I'm not complaining...it's just the truth.
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