Not everyone is happy about DOGE’s mission to slash the bloated bureaucracy…

The headline is correct but the article is essentially a justification for the bloated status quo:

Vivek’s back-to-the-office mandate could finally eradicate the deep state

New Trump administration can demonstrate its commitment to fiscal responsibility and effective governance[.]

That all sounds great, but if you keep reading, the article sounds like an advertisement from federal employee unions. Here is the first example:

While this plan is bold and disruptive, it also poses significant risks that merit careful consideration by the administration.

Getting rid of unnecessary bureaucrats requires “careful consideration” and comes with “significant risks”? I mean who wrote this? A federal worker who’s been hunkered down on their couch since the pandemic and “working” remotely?

Then, there’s this:

Federal employees are responsible for managing a $6.1 trillion budget, with payroll costs totaling $110 billion annually, representing just 1.8% of the total budget.

I have a hard time believing that employee costs, including high-end Cadillac benefits and pensions, is only 1.8% of the federal budget.

The writer also seems to think that all these employees are necessary and their skills are hard to duplicate—but most of them are pencil pushers and keyboard operators. How many duplicate agencies and employees are there?

However, these numbers fail to account for the high costs of recruiting and training replacements, the loss of institutional knowledge, and the operational delays that would result from a sudden mass exodus of skilled employees.

Federal jobs often require specialized expertise, meaning it could take years to rebuild the workforce effectively, further delaying critical services.

Government employees are notorious for being laughably incompetent, so I’m not sure how this is a serious opinion.

Then the writer is a big promoter of remote work. He seems to think that employees never screw off at home. Then he brags that remote work reduces costs of physical space… which is clearly not true. The federal government still maintains the physical spaces with all their leases—these buildings just sit empty.

Ramaswamy’s vision also raises questions about the value of remote work, which has proven its effectiveness in the federal sector. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telework enabled federal agencies to maintain productivity while reducing costs associated with physical office spaces.

Then the writer trusts the self-serving OMB when they say how remote work is efficient and saves money. How many OMB people work from home?

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has documented that flexible work arrangements often enhance operational efficiency, particularly for roles that do not require physical presence. A broad return-to-office mandate would reverse these gains and require substantial reinvestments in office infrastructure, such as utilities, maintenance and security, potentially negating the intended savings.

The reason the federal budget, and number of employees always rises is because of garbage pieces like this. Ask the Hurricane Helene victims if FEMA is efficient.

We also always hear that you can’t or shouldn’t cut entitlements. The problem with that is that they always raise the income levels of people who qualify for SNAP benefits or Obamacare, or student loans. They never make an effort to control costs.

There is also a heck of a lot of bloat in the administration of all benefit programs along with massive fraud. If these employees were good at their jobs, we wouldn’t have all the fraud.

The media, other Democrats, many Republicans, and all the bureaucrats will try to maintain the fiefdom they have confiscated, and then they will pretend to care about the deficit and debt if Trump and his team want to give the freedom, power, and money back to the people where it belongs.

The dictators are in the swamp, not Trump.

Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode>, via Flickr, unaltered.

Image: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr, unaltered.

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