[pm90]

It’s a terrifying experiment in hollowing out the civil service. At some point a critical mass of Federal workers may be lost which brings the entire machinery of the Federal Government to a standstill.

It’s also not clear how to recover from something like this.

[buran77]

That's the intention of this administration. Destroy any service that the government could provide until people can genuinely think the government is useless. Then the people currently in power and their cronies will come out of the woodwork "saving" the country with their private companies and interests. Competing with an empty shell of a government is the easiest way.

As a side effect, if they're to lose the next election they leave a corpse on the doorstep of the next administration. That makes it so much easier to pass on the blame.

Aligns perfectly with these people's views that a country is best led like a company not like a democracy. The realistic outcome will be formally (rather than the informal one as until now) corpocracy.

[actionfromafar]

I think we were pretty close to a Corpocracy before this administration. The realistic outcome is "Russia" but spelled "USA".

[rayiner]

There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is. The federal bureaucracy is completely dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe....

No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors. This is not a sustainable situation in a democracy.

[fabbari]

Did you actually look at the numbers? You should give it a try. The best you can get from those numbers is that people are more likely to donate to the Democratic party than the Republican one.

For example: true, 99.4% of the donations from the USDA employees went to the Democratic part. 99.4% of how many donations? Less than 3,000. - Source [0] - and that's an overestimate, since that filter will include donations from 2015.

How many employees work for the USDA? About 100,000 [1].

That means that 97,000 people made no donations - to either party.

[0] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...

[1]

[keeda]

Also, from the very same govexec link:

> The lopsided donations do not necessarily reflect how the federal workforce is voting. The former State Department secretary led the businessman by 5 percentage points among federal employees in a July poll by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Clinton, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump.

[rayiner]

Why wouldn’t donations be a reasonable proxy? 3,000 samples is more than enough to have a statistically significant analysis of a population of 100,000.

[bigbadfeline]

> 3,000 samples is more than enough to have a statistically significant analysis of a population of 100,000.

It's not a valid sample because it's not a random selection - statistical sampling isn't only about sample size.

One reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the above numbers is that the Democrats in government are less stingy about donations, or that the Republicans there don't really like the GOP and are there for the money alone.

[rayiner]

I think that’s an odd theory.

[fabbari]

It is not a population sample - IE: we didn’t randomly pick 3000 people and observed who they donated to. Or in other words: we asked the whole population who they wanted to donate to and 97,000 said “none”.

[bigbadfeline]

> There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is.

If you admit that the administration is up to "ulterior motives", you have to admit that they are likely to have more than one. There's no reason to assume there's only a single one and we should disregard everything else, no matter how well supported by the facts - looking at the composition of this admin, a drive to corpocracy is a a rather well supported assumption.

On the other hand, if a re-balancing was justified or required, it wouldn't be an ulterior motive, it would be up, front and center because it helps to paint the admin in a good light. The scope and reasons for the imbalance would be widely discussed... something that isn't happening. Also, to avoid disruption, it would be done gradually and absolutely NOT under the diabolical slogan "The Government is Bad".

I think, I practically proved the point of the parent of your comment, and disproved yours.

[tzs]

That link is looking at money donated which is not a very good measure because the amount a person donates is not fixed.

When you instead match up personnel and voter registration records you get that about half of the federal workforce was Democrats. Republicans were around a third in the late 1990s, but fell to about a quarter by 2019.

Polls of federal workers for specific elections also suggest that it is not nearly as imbalanced as the money totals. For instance in the 2022 midterms 37% of federal workers said they were voting Democrat in Senate races and 33% said they were voting Republican. In House races it 46% voting Democrat, 35% voting Republican.

[buran77]

> This is not a sustainable situation in a democracy.

Purging your enemies from everything and instead putting your buddies (especially as dishonest and unqualified as the ones this admin brought) will fix the current "unsustainable" situation? Is it even marginally less bad? Because looking from the distance what they're doing is changing from "not great" to "awful" for democracy, and looking close up I'm sure it looks even worse.

There's not a single illegal, abusive, or plain stupid thing that this admin has done where you can't find some "silver lining" that allows you to dilute the problem and make it look like you're part of some solution. "And well, the implementation may not have been perfect but we're trying to fix things".

Nothing about this was for democracy or the country, and who those people donate do doesn't matter. Only who they don't donate to.

[rayiner]

I think an independent civil service dominated by a single party is the single greatest threat to democracy. It’s highly destabilizing when the executive branch is on auto-pilot pursuing its own policies regardless of whom voters elect as President.

[buran77]

> an independent civil service dominated by a single party is the single greatest threat to democracy

Any party? I'm not sure if you realize what's coming next, or if you saw the irony as you typed this. No need for more mental gymnastics rayiner.

[amalcon]

The military is similarly dominated by the other party. Somehow, we expect them to be professional. Professionalism here means to faithfully execute lawful orders even when a Democrat is in the white house. There were no personal loyalty tests for the military under Obama, or loyalty purges.

That went fine (in that the military did in fact follow lawful orders under Democratic presidents, not in that those orders were necessarily good). It also went fine for the civil service under Republican presidents other than Trump. There are a number of explanations for the difference in perceived (and possibly real) professionalism, which I will not try to speculate on here - but this is not a partisanship problem. It seems to be something specific to Trump-as-President.

[rayiner]

The military is uniquely disciplined and socialized to follow orders in a way the ordinary civil service isn’t.

And in comparison to previous republicans, the difference is two-fold. First, the government has been affected by the same politicization of the workplace that’s happened in corporate America over the last decade.

Second, previous republicans are aligned with neoliberal democrats on certain key cultural issues. Reagan publicly opposed affirmative action, but his government kept implementing and expanding it. Reagan and Bush supported immigration and Reagan granted amnesty. Highly educated democrats were willing to play along with certain issues, but see Trump’s issues as fundamentally moral ones. E.g. Even today, there is almost no partisan politics within the FCC. The career folks will happily go back and forth on net neutrality all day long. Nobody sees it as a moral imperative the way they see immigration.

[ckemere]

Both of my parents worked at times for the Federal, state, and local governments. From that small sample size (also including corworkers, neighbors, etc) I would suggest that it IS the case that government workers will be strongly biased towards process-oriented changes. So “ignore the rules” will not go over well for most of them.

I think the most charitable interpretation of your argument might be that people would be more inclined to ignore the rules for ideas they believe in, but my data suggests that government employees in general (and not just the military!!) tend to be rule followers. I would argue that most people’s complaints about the government historically could be summed up by this???

[actionfromafar]

Don't worry, it's probably not a democracy anymore.

[UncleMeat]

Now do cops.

It is a pretty remarkable strategy to be able to spend decades shitting all over the federal bureaucracy as a party, obviously discouraging conservatives from joining the bureaucracy, and then using party affiliation (obviously further skewed by the fact that federal workers tend to have college degrees, tend to be more racially diverse, and tend to live in the DC metro area) to decide that the whole thing needs to be destroyed.

What happened to merit as a hiring preference?

[morcus]

Is this DEI for Trump supporters?

[SAI_Peregrinus]

It's Unity, Exclusion, and Incompetence. UEI is perfectly suited to Trump supporters.

[thisisit]

You are spamming the same comment all over this thread. And this is just the RW hypocrisy at full display.

Trump is apparently the strong man leader with lots of support but at the same time the weakest leader who can be obstructed by smallest of opposition.

If he cannot get his most ardent detractors to support him then he is not much of a leader.

The sheer amount of complaining is grating and not even backed up with facts. It seemed you ran with the first article you found on Google and didn't read the conclusion:

> in a July poll by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Clinton, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump.

That is maybe Democract are driven more to contribute but in voting there is just 5% difference. So much for "dominated by one party".

[alphabettsy]

You can always count on him to go to bat for RW nonsense.

[mindslight]

The federal bureaucracy is only "completely dominated" by one party, because the other party embraced a several-decades-long marketing campaign about how the de jure government is inefficient, hostile, and needs to be destroyed. It's utterly disingenuous to cast this in some relativist context, when this makeup is a direct result of the Republican party's chosen actions.

And I'm saying this as a libertarian who shares most of those frustrations with entrenched bureaucracy - just one who has become extremely conservative now that open fascism is upon us.

[at-fates-hands]

>>> That's the intention of this administration. Destroy any service that the government could provide until people can genuinely think the government is useless.

Not really sure ANY government service runs well. There are maybe one or two but as a whole government run anything never seems to be done well or at a decent cost. Just scan the comments about the massive overspending and poor service we already get as taxpayers.

Trying to get a properly run government program or service has been going on since the country was founded.

[buran77]

> Not really sure ANY government service runs well

I don't think you have perspective on that. What I'm telling you is that it can be a lot worse. I don't think you realize how much less accountable any private company is and that if you are ever ruled by one you will effectively be under a very abusive dictatorship, for all intents and purposes.

Random example. Google can cut you off from everything Google related and then some (identity, data, purchases, anything external that was linked to Google identity, etc.) with no recourse or justification. How often does the Government do that to you?

It's very easy to complaint when you've never seen the worse alternatives. How many people alive in US today do you think have even lived under them?

[mindslight]

I've got this theory that people think government service must be so terrible because it was poor compared to corporate service in the 80's (the Golden Age of Boomerism), corporate service shamelessly got so much worse, and they simply assume government service must also have.

I've called the federal government a handful of times (IRS, Savings Bonds, Social Security). The people I spoke with were knowledgeable and empowered. A bit comic promulgating bureaucracy and delays (I think I was once told something like oh your case is only 10 days late being processed so it's not a priority yet), and of course some wait on hold/callback game. But the people I would end up speaking to had my paperwork in front of them, readily answered questions in an intelligent manner, and were empowered to make binding decisions for the government.

There was none of the "your ticket is still open so the only thing I can do is add a note that you called", or "sorry you've reached the wrong department, I can transfer you" buck passing bullshit that permeates corporate phone mazes. It was actually a breath of fresh air compared to dealing with corporate banks and financial institutions (at Vanguard I was told I had reached the wrong department, transferred, and waited on hold again five times before reaching the "correct" department).

I've also represented myself on the phone to my state's tax authority, and they were eminently reasonable as well. On the scheduled phone call (with me, their agent, and his supervisor), we agreed to an amicable solution on the spot. (I had really wanted to hire an attorney but they all played the equivocation game!)

[at-fates-hands]

>> It's very easy to complaint when you've never seen the worse alternatives.

I have relatives that fled the USSR during the heights of communism. I have played soccer with guys who came from South American countries that were mired in Civil War. Two of my best friends fled South Asia during the Pol Pot regime.

Its interesting you tell me I have no perspective without even knowing who I am or what I've experienced in my life. To judge someone like this is pretty offensive.

I'm keenly aware of how dictatorships work. I've heard and seen what an abusive government is capable of. I have yet to see the abuses people I know fled from happen here in the US.

>> How often does the Government do that to you?

Your short term memory must not be very good:

"If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor."

"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan."

"Take this vaccine or you're going to lose your job."

"This is the govt, you need to remove posts that we don't like."

"We couldn't come to an agreement on a budget so the government is shut down until further notice."

https://mailomg.com/2025/09/17/opinion-the-good-the-bad-and-...

With a second attempt to rectify PAEA’s errors, Congress successfully granted a financial reform of $57 billion dollars through the Postal Service Reform Act in FY 2022. Soon after, Postmaster General DeJoy announced his “Delivering for America Plan” (DFA)

Delivery performance suffered as well, as the new consolidated facilities far underperformed the prior structure, leading to enormous cost overruns and overtime. The infrastructure for new EV delivery vehicles simply did not exist, and the selected manufacturer fell behind implementation times as each facility needed to be retrofitted for EV charging.

[ss2003]

>> Not really sure ANY government service runs well.

Really? You think no government services runs well? None what so ever???

[timr]

I'm not terrified. Just to put some perspective on this, per Pew [1], the federal workforce excluding the postal service (which has actually shrunk as a semi-private employer) has grown by about 1% per year since 2000. As of 2024, it was at 2.4M people. The federal workforce is dramatically bigger than it was even a few years ago [2].

Moreover, the vast majority of federal workers don't have anything to do with the kind of consumer-facing services that people think of when they think "government". More than half of all federal employees comprise: the Defense departments (Army, Navy, DoD, etc.), the Department of Homeland Security and the VA [3].

The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.

To be clear, this is not the right way to reduce the size of the federal government, but I'm not "terrified" of losing 100k employees in a government of this size. We need more cutting, not less.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...

[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...

[ndiddy]

If you zoom out (https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-f...), the size of the federal workforce has been at around 2.7-3 million people since the late 1960s, while the US population has gone from ~198 million in 1967 to ~343 million in 2025. We've gone from 14.39 federal employees per 1,000 people in 1967 to 8.78 federal employees per 1,000 people in 2024. Given that many of these employees do things like maintain infrastructure, regulate goods and services, and provide healthcare, you would expect the federal workforce to scale with the population.

> The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.

Most of the budget increase (~80-85% depending on whose projections you look at) comes from entitlements (social security, medicare/medicaid) and interest payments on the federal debt rather than any new spending. Of course interest payments are caused by past irresponsible spending, but it's hard to avoid debt if whenever the "party of fiscal responsibility" is in power, it does loud and flashy budget cuts that don't meaningfully reduce federal spending, followed by massive tax cuts to juice the economy. This is basically the equivalent of quitting your job and buying a ton of stuff on a credit card because you won $1000 on a scratch-off.

[timr]

> the size of the federal workforce has been at around 2.7-3 million people since the late 1960s, while the US population has gone from ~198 million in 1967 to ~343 million in 2025. We've gone from 14.39 federal employees per 1,000 people in 1967 to 8.78 federal employees per 1,000 people in 2024.

Again, so what? The entire premise that government should scale with population is questionable. These comparisons with US population are facile.

Again, most of the employees are with Defense, VA and Homeland Security, none of which "should" scale with US population. I could go down the list and identify many other areas that likewise do not obviously scale with population (e.g. Agriculture, Interior, State, NASA, etc.) but this entire line of argument is pedantic. It's obvious to anyone who has dealt with the government that it is a bloated bureaucracy.

We completely agree that the budget problem is, at root, entitlements, but that doesn't mean that the government workforce is anywhere near an optimal level. I remain unterrified of a cut to 100,000 workers.

[AnnikaL]

Why shouldn't Agriculture scale with population? Presumably a larger population involves more food being sold in the US (and grown in the US if the share of exports/imports remains the same).

[grumbelbart]

> the federal workforce excluding the postal service (which has actually shrunk, as a semi-private employer) has grown by about 1% per year since 2000

That's less than it seems though, given that the US population has grown with over 0.7% per year for most of those years.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...

[timr]

> That's less than it seems though, given that the US population has grown with over 0.7% per year for most of those years.

So what? Why does government have to grow proportionally with the size of the population? This is not a given in any other organization.

[SR2Z]

You generally expect the size of an organization to scale with the scope of its activities, especially if its activities include "healthcare" and "building roads."

[timr]

"Scope of activities", maybe, but there's no inherent reason that has to be equal the rate of growth in the population. You'd hope that government becomes more efficient over time.

Private organizations have profit constraints, and they're constantly striving to become more efficient, cut what doesn't work, and so on. Government has no such constraint.

[ryandrake]

To compare, Walmart employs over 2M workers, and as efficient as they are, they still need to scale with the size of their business scope. Whether it's a linear scale or a log scale, they need more and more people as they do more and more.

The fact that the same order of magnitude number of people can administer an entire country as the number of people that it takes to administer a bunch of stores is actually remarkable.

[SR2Z]

The government has become more efficient over time and its size as a percentage of the population has reduced as the population has grown.

Government does have a constraint like that - it has to remain solvent. A government as powerful as the United States has many tricks it can use to do that, but at some point even it cannot do anything it wants.

[throw0101c]

> Why does government have to grow proportionally with the size of the population?

It does not, and did not:

* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001

[timr]

I'm responding to the parent's implicit assertion that the government should somehow naturally grow with the size of the population.

Arguing that it historically has not done so only makes my point. Nor is it an argument that government should not be smaller today.

[nullocator]

Why do we need more cutting? Why does the size of the federal government need to decrease? Please list the ways in which I and my community will benefit from a federal government with less personnel.

[cogman10]

> It’s also not clear how to recover from something like this.

You pretty much have to double spend to get out. Same way ICE is handling recruitment shortfalls.

Government jobs have never had great salaries (but decent benefits) vs the private sector. You need to make those jobs actually competitive.

[burkaman]

One of the main selling points was stability and a clear career path, and obviously that's gone now. Would probably take decades to rebuild that.

[kleinsch]

That's their entire strategy. Shrink government causing government to become ineffective, which provides evidence that government should shrink even more.

[xnx]

AKA "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

[ldoughty]

The point is that they don't want it to recover. This is evidence that the US Government can't be trusted to provide the service themselves, and those functions should be privatized / contracted out instead... like how our Defense budget is so small thanks to us paying government contractors for everything we need, like $5,000 screwdrivers and $7,500 toilet seats installed by $300/hour Mechanic Specialist II's.