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Vivek Ramaswamy, who is too rich to settle for buying himself a fancy car to assuage his mid-life crisis, decided instead to run for president said, "I've fired underperformers in the private sector. I'm going to do it for probably 75% of the people who work as federal bureaucrats in the government in Washington, D.C."

So, whatcha' think? Ignoring the viability of him making mass layoffs on Day One, do you agree with Ramaswamy and support the elimination of 75% of the federal workforce?

So, whatcha' think? Ignoring the viability of him making mass layoffs on Day One, do you agree with Ramaswamy and support the elimination of 75% of the federal workforce? - CO

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Certainly not ever one of 4 million plus Federal Employees is essential. So the question is what percent could be eliminated. Make note of the so called Federal Shutdowns when a debt ceiling bill stalls out, hardly anybody notices.

So 75% on day one is clearly ridiculous. But it is reasonable that a large number could be eliminated over the course of one or two terms as president. However, given the present state of civil service processes to cut anybody, it is unlikely that even 1% could be achieved. Remember the hoops Trump had to go through to fire the VA Administrators who were incompetent and were maintaining fake records to hide the actual wait times experienced by veterans, and those jobs were not even being eliminated.

So, whatcha' think? Ignoring the viability of him making mass layoffs on Day One, do you agree with Ramaswamy and support the elimination of 75% of the federal workforce?

I spent many years working in the private sector but also over 2 decades working for the federal government.

Yes, there are problems of efficiency and productivity in the government and ALSO in most large organizations, including large corporations. My experience was that the lower echelons in the agency I worked for were mostly full of highly motivated and hard working individuals. But bureaucracies tend to grow top heavy and bloated. The closer to the source of funds the easier it is to justify increased pay and expanded staffing to do work YOU should be doing.

But the idea that you could eliminate 75% of the federal workforce? Insane. You cannot have a modern society without adequate government. This is just stupid. Can you make it more efficient? Yes.

Do you remember the Clinton/Gore initiative to improve government efficiency: Reinventing government? I was working for the feds at that time and this program was actually making a difference. They started trimming a lot of the middle management fat. I found this very encouraging. Get rid of some of those office drones who do very little for the taxpayers. But I also worried that this would get undone because bureaucracy is so hard to change. And sure enough, some years later all the bloat was back.

As a supervisor I found that firing someone for lack of performance was VERY difficult in the federal government. It was much easier to fire someone for conduct issues. On the one hand this meant that it was harder for bad bosses to fire people for the wrong reasons, but it really was harder than it should have been to fire someone for poor performance. This is a problem.

The National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) was a U.S. government reform initiative launched in 1993 by Vice President Al Gore. Its goal was to make the federal government "work better, cost less, and get results Americans care about".

One thing you can be sure of, with a right wing government we'll get more cronyism and corruption. Trump would be horrible in this regard. And you would see people getting fired because they held the wrong political beliefs.

bighairymike: So 75% on day one is clearly ridiculous. But it is reasonable that a large number could be eliminated over the course of one or two terms as president.

ges: But the idea that you could eliminate 75% of the federal workforce? Insane. You cannot have a modern society without adequate government. This is just stupid. Can you make it more efficient? Yes.

Well, Vivek baffles me. He's polling at about 7% but his ideas are insane. Since defense and security-related agencies account for more than 70% of the entire federal workforce, promising to gut 75% really is insane.

Even if he only goes after the civilian employees at the Department of Defense agencies, they account for about 36% of the civilian federal workforce.

Vivek also wants to raise the voting age to 25 and end birthright citizenship. Yeah, I know... Constitutional amendments are pesky things, dontchaknow.

But, hey, he was a successful businessman, so he must know how to lead government.

Oh wait.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who is too rich to settle for buying himself a fancy car to assuage his mid-life crisis, decided instead to run for president said, "I've fired underperformers in the private sector. I'm going to do it for probably 75% of the people who work as federal bureaucrats in the government in Washington, D.C."

We need Goofyhoofy here to give us a rendition of how this is false. The fact is that some areas in the US Government are recognized around the world as working very well and very efficiently besides how the workers there feel about it. :)

I remember well that at one point some Republicans were attempting to privatize the IRS' dunning letter system. (A dunning letter is a collection notice sent to a customer explaining that a payment they owe is overdue.) Now this software would print and mail collection letters for certain debt on a schedule for about 2 years with escalating messages - all legal. The people dunned could also set up dispute resolution - there are valid disputes. Not all debt went to this system, but most of it did. It was very efficient and other countries studied the system to increase their debt collection.

At one point the privatize everything folk wanted to privatize this. But how it would work was the computer part would be done by the private sector, then the actual person to person collection work would go back to the IRS. Why go back? The IRS already tried using private person to person collectors and the people's rights were trampled. Turned out you needed a skilled workforce who were trained on those rights for the best results.

We would lose money and control by privatizing the dunning letter system.

Moral of this story: If you want to have a nightmare state where your rights aren't considered and no one pays attention to whether you have a legitimate complaint or that you actually are harmed or don't owe the money, go ahead and fire that 75%.

But it is reasonable that a large number could be eliminated over the course of one or two terms as president.

"Could be?" Sure. But it would never happen - because most federal employees are doing jobs that most people approve of.

The largest federal employers, by a mile and more, are the defense agencies (Veteran's Affairs, Army, Navy, Air Force, Homeland Security, DoD proper). Percentages vary, depending on whether you look at civilian vs. all employment (about 70% of federal employees are in those agencies, and about 36% of civilian employees are) and whether you include the Post Office in these discussions (USPS has about 600K employees, which is enormous). These figures are from 2019, but won't have changed much. The largest single federal agency by civilian employment is either USPS (if you count it) or Veteran's Affairs (if you don't).

https://ourpublicservice.org/wp-content/uploads/20...

It's hard to imagine Republicans being willing to take an axe - or even a scalpel - to those defense-related agencies. Indeed, there's a huge contingent in the party that has been pressing to increase defense funding, and presumably wouldn't take too kindly to RIF measures depleting their overall employment levels. Most of the agencies that Republicans/conservatives generally disfavor (HUD, Labor, Education, certain parts of HHS) just don't have that many employees, relative to the overall size of government.

SALT deductions should never be restored.

And there should be *no* donut for FICA tax withholding.


10,000,000 additional High Tech Visa'd people should be permanent residents - today.


Greedy White Racist Liberals wouldn't have any of that.

But it is reasonable that a large number could be eliminated over the course of one or two terms as president.

Not reasonably. Go back and look at the results of the hiring freezes under Obama, sequestrations, government shutdowns, with an eye toward who gets hurt. Hiring freezes in the IRS cost us tax money, they also make it difficult to hire and retain good talent in any Dept. Sequestrations actually cost government contractors good money - and we do it in the end anyway. Government shutdowns are dumb - Congress votes to pay gov workers for being in limbo - but many would have been hurt.

You go into the gov for a variety of reasons, but you stay for the stability and benefits, plus it isn't bad work. I remember doing a calculation one day which supported what I thought. Non-government pay is higher, but I took the past 5 years and netted the periods of unemployment to come to my actual pay over that period. It was better to stay in the government when you looked at the benefits. I could actually see retirement in the Gov. I would get a small pension, plus my equivalent of a 401k. The stability was well worth it, as you could plan.

I lived on a boat in a Marina for a period. Fellows would divorce, separate, lose their jobs, ruined for a period of time and live in boats, lamenting in front of the communal TV in the clubhouse. I could identify with 90% of their problems, and empathetic to the rest. I was one of the few with a retirement plan, and mine was loose, just sketched out once a year with guesstimates, etc., when my annual report came in from the gov.

SALT deductions should never be restored.

Nope. And I say that as a blue stater (I live in Washington). Don't ever restore that.

Coastal smuggies love to point out how much federal money goes to icky red states while glossing over the fact that a) the income they earned isn't taxed as much as they say it should be and b) the reasons why their states are prosperous often have zero to do with liberalism. In fact there's a c) there that goes c) their states are often prosperous DESPITE their liberalism.

So, el nope-o. Let them continue to pay.

BTW. Vivek's right. Here's a start: implement a flat tax and cut the IRS down by 99%.

But it is reasonable that a large number could be eliminated over the course of one or two terms as president.

Disagree here.

We need more federal employees. Off the top of my head, we need more FDA/USDA inspectors. A lot more. We need more IRS auditors (who will largely pay for themselves with increased revenues from tax-cheats). We need more SEC investigators. We need more OSHA investigators.

I could probably think of more if I dug deep, but we've been cutting those jobs for decades, and it shows.

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