Your statement does not make any sense. Why is it gutless?
Let's assume you are president. The EPA has 10,000 more employees than you think they need. You send a budget to Congress requesting the 10,000 positions be eliminated from the budget. Congress ignores you, and appropriates funds for the entire existing staffing level.
So, what do you do as president? Do you veto the appropriation bill and shut down all departments included in that bill? That is one option, but one few presidents or Congresses have been able to sustain for long. Do you fire the 10,000 employees anyway, even though they are protected by the Civil Service act and possibly union contracts? If so, how does that make you different from Obama, deciding which laws to enforce and which ones to ignore?
There is a false presumption here in that you are saying Congress specifies the number of positions. They appropriate DOLLARS, not positions, to fill a request to fund a number of positions. My Treasury sets up the accounts, but that does not mean I MUST, by law, spend every dime. Congress doesn't tell me how many people I MUST hire or retain because determining staffing levels is an executive function, not a legislative function. They only tell me how much I can have to accomplish the goals they directed (per an ESA relying upon unconstitutional Section 1531 treaty "authority"). I can decide that I'll get more tortoises by giving Mr. Bundy a contract to increase their numbers with his cows, which he very easily can do, as tortoises depend upon post disturbance plants requiring the nitrates the cows leave behind. But I digress.
Layoff. Contract it out. Make more tortoises and watch the courts squirm using NEPAs citation of "market failure" as supposedly legitimate justification for the emergency powers to protect public health and safety they've been citing as basis for this crap. The market wants to do it. The agency will have to get out of the way and that means they are not needed. Instead I had spent less money more efficiently and eliminated the need for staffing in the process.
Done. And that's just one example.