“Its objectives include investigating wasteful spending, examining ways to reorganize federal agencies to improve efficiency and identifying solutions to eliminate bureaucratic red tape.” Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.
“To call federal employees ‘bureaucrats,’ to call federal employees ‘deep state,’ in my opinion, is an indictment against federal employees,” Kelley said Friday morning in an interview on C-SPAN.
“The federal employees that you’re calling bureaucrats are the nurses that take care of the veterans who are wounded.
In April 2023, the Biden administration asked agencies to bring telework-eligible federal employees onsite for about 50% of their work hours.
In August, OMB reported that out of 2.2 million federal employees, about 54% of federal employees work fully in person, 46% of feds are eligible for telework and 10% work fully remotely.
Congress will soon also examine the Department of Government Efficiency’s attempts to drastically reduce government spending and the federal workforce.
Plans to establish a DOGE subcommittee in the upcoming Congress were announced this week by the leaders of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. Representative. Greene, Marjorie Taylor (R-Ga. will act as the chairwoman of the subcommittee.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the former GOP presidential candidate, are leading DOGE, which seeks to reduce government spending by $2 trillion. This amount is significantly more than several previous administrations’ attempts to increase government efficiency. Donald Trump, the incoming president, appointed Musk and Ramaswamy to head the external commission.
Ramaswamy and other members of the incoming Trump administration’s DOGE team have already met with lawmakers, according to a source familiar with the Oversight committee’s plans. The source went on to say that the committee’s plans are “supported” by the DOGE team and that the two groups are already collaborating.
The source told Federal News Network that the DOGE subcommittee will assist the Oversight and Accountability Committee in its efforts to eradicate fraud, waste, and abuse within the federal government. Its goals are to find ways to improve the efficiency of federal agencies, look into wasteful spending, and find ways to get rid of bureaucratic red tape. “”.
Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) is a ranking member of the oversight committee. However, the plans for the new subcommittee were criticized by the GOP-led committee.
“Under Trump, Greene will lead a subcommittee to work with two unscreened billionaires who could get billions more in government contracts and subsidies,” Raskin said. For this reason, Democrats will continue to emphasize corruption, abuse, fraud, and waste. Instead of the billionaire oligarchs, the people own the government. “.”.
James Comer, the committee’s chairman (R-Ky. is anticipated to serve as the committee’s leader in the upcoming Congress. Comer intends to announce more Oversight subcommittees in the upcoming weeks. These will be formally formed beginning with the start of the 119th Congress early next year.
The heads of DOGE suggest “large-scale firings” of federal employees.
There are still many unanswered questions regarding how DOGE would try to achieve its objectives, but more information is starting to surface. In November… Musk and Ramaswamy stated in a 20 Wall Street Journal op-ed that Trump could use executive action to significantly cut the size of the federal workforce. This action could include “reductions in force,” “large-scale firings,” and moving agency headquarters outside of Washington, D.C. A.
“We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws,” they wrote.
Through the General Services Administration, Office of Management and Budget, and Office of Personnel Management, at least some of DOGE’s recommendations could be put into practice.
As stated in an interview by Kevin Owen, a partner at Gilbert Employment Law, a firm that focuses on federal employment law, “quite a bit can be done, given the existing rules, without even changing any law, rule, or regulation.”. However, there are steps that could be taken to make the federal government into a bad employer rather than just an unappealing one, which would make people genuinely unwilling to work for the government. “.”.
However, former Republican Congressman Tom Davis of Virginia stated that it would be extremely difficult to implement any significant workforce reductions or funding reductions at the levels recommended by DOGE, and that some of them would need legislative approval.
Lawmaking is extremely difficult. At a Coalition for Government Procurement conference on Wednesday, Davis stated, “You have to be able to fit it within reconciliation, and they may overreach in some of these areas.”. “The best thing I can suggest is that you have a conversation, find someone with whom you can discuss this, and ensure that they don’t do anything foolish. “”.
“Unrealistic” is how Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Brookings Institution, described the DOGE team’s current strategy. Within a Nov. In an 18 opinion piece for Brookings, Kamarck contended that significant reductions in the federal workforce and discretionary budget would make it difficult, if not impossible, for organizations like Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Social Security Administration to fulfill their missions.
Kamarck wrote, “So how do you cut government? With a scalpel, not an axe.”. She continued by saying that “we conducted a thorough review agency by agency, something the DOGE program would be wise to repeat” during the Clinton administration. “”.
During his campaign, Trump also pledged to move over 100,000 workers and reinstate a Schedule F-style policy that would eliminate civil service protections for some federal employees and make it simpler to fire them.
Schedule F proponents stated that the goal of the initiatives is to provide agencies with greater latitude and the power to terminate workers who are not doing their jobs well. However, Schedule F detractors have characterized the executive order as a flimsy attempt to politicize the civil service’s career division.
The largest union that represents federal workers, the American Federation of Government Employees, has a national president named Everett Kelley. Kelley urged the incoming administration to perform a much more thorough analysis of the federal workforce.
“I believe that calling federal employees “bureaucrats” or “deep state” is an indictment against them,” Kelley stated in a C-SPAN interview on Friday morning. “The nurses who care for injured veterans are the federal workers you’re referring to as bureaucrats. They work for Social Security. They work for the [Bureau of Prisons]. They are employees of the Transportation Security Administration who ensure the safety of our skies. They are the meat inspectors who ensure the safety of the food we consume. I believe it’s misguided to declare that you’re going to cut them before first determining what the federal government actually needs. “”.
“Whether or not I’m loyal to you as an individual should never be the basis for the government,” Kelley continued. “It ought to be determined by my ability to perform the duties for which I was employed. “.”.
The removal of career federal employees proportionate to the number of federal regulations “nullified” is another workforce reduction strategy that Musk and Ramaswamy emphasized in their opinion piece. “”.
“Once its scope of authority is appropriately limited, the agency would produce fewer regulations, in addition to requiring fewer employees to enforce fewer regulations,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.
According to Owen, the fundamental reasoning is that if there is less need for regulatory oversight, there is also less need for individuals to carry out that oversight. The largest federal employers are the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Postal Service, he said, adding that it would be impossible to implement the idea the op-ed described given the size and scope of the plan.
“Regulatory supervision is unrelated to any of those stances. Government services are those. Owen stated that an actual loss of jobs would not result from fewer regulations.
Furthermore, according to Owen, many of DOGE’s proposals are more difficult to implement than they seem, especially in light of the deadline Musk and Ramaswamy set for accomplishing the organization’s objectives on July 4, 2026.
Owen stated that there will be protections, particularly for high performers, veterans, and those with a significant number of years of service, because there are regulations and [reduction in force] rights. It remains to be seen what the specifics will be as to whether it will be completely stopped or if legal action can be taken to obtain a restraining order. “”.
Owen clarified, however, that he views the DOGE subcommittee’s plans as a more constructive step.
“There has been strong congressional interest and on-the-record discussions about the scope, purposes, and intent whenever you’ve seen significant changes to the civil service regulations and rules,” Owen stated. People would be able to understand why things are being changed thanks to that degree of public discussion. “.”.
The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit good government organization, stated that while it generally supports more effective and efficient government, it advised against pursuing initiatives before conducting a more thorough analysis and comprehension of the federal workforce.
In an interview with Federal News Network, the Partnership stated, “There are numerous ways that we can increase the efficiency of these services — from putting into practice outstanding recommendations from federal oversight entities, to investing in necessary changes to personnel capacity and outdated IT systems, to building on policy recommendations.”. “A thorough understanding of the work that agencies perform, who their clients are, and whether proposed changes will have a detrimental effect on service and mission delivery are prerequisites for the success of any efficiency initiative, including DOGE. While we should all support measures to improve the federal government’s operations, arbitrary program and personnel cuts won’t accomplish that. “.”.
In any case, former Congressman Davis stated that he anticipates DOGE to be “front and center” when presenting Trump with recommendations on drastically reducing the number of federal employees and expenses.
“There are some opportunities among all of this chaos,” Davis stated. “We have some hints about where they might go to provide services more effectively and economically. In Washington, they acknowledge that some long-standing issues aren’t really functioning all that well. Mission-driven government has essentially given way to regulation-driven government, and you aren’t receiving the necessary innovation. “.”.
Federal exits in waves would be “welcome,” according to the DOGE team.
Telework for federal employees has continued to be a major source of contention in the years after the COVID-19 pandemic. The Biden Administration requested in April 2023 that agencies bring federal employees who are eligible for telework on-site for roughly half of their working hours. In order to place staff members at that level of in-person work, numerous agencies have since instituted return-to-office policies.
Of the 2 million federal employees, approximately 54% work entirely in person, 46% are eligible for telework, and 10% work entirely remotely, according to an August OMB report. Approximately 61% of federal employees who are eligible for telework currently complete their work onsite.
However, a large number of Republicans have criticized the government’s telework policy and are putting more pressure on the Biden administration to bring federal employees back to work on-site. Agency backlogs and customer service issues have been attributed to telework. The goal of the 2023 GOP-led “SHOW UP” Act is to get agencies back to their pre-pandemic telework levels.
In their opinion piece, Musk and Ramaswamy stated that if the incoming Trump administration mandates that all federal employees work in person five days a week, they would “welcome” what they hope will be a “wave” of federal workers quitting their jobs.
The Government Accountability Office discovered in a Nov. study that while telework options were demonstrated to enhance federal recruitment and retention in a number of agency case studies, pay and workload remained more crucial elements for successful federal hiring. Report number 22.
According to the GAO report, agency performance is better predicted by variables other than telework, such as workloads, staffing levels, and technology. For instance, IRS officials claimed that the agency’s improvements in customer service and call wait times for taxpayers were a result of staffing increases and technological advancements brought about by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
However, GAO noted that agencies still need to thoroughly assess the effects of telework on agency performance results. According to some agencies, it is challenging to come up with a firm response because of the complexity of figuring out how telework impacts performance.
Federal News Network, 2024. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. Users from the European Economic Area are not the target audience for this website.
