Two percent of employed Americans work for the government!

 Weekly Opinion Editorial

VOLUNTARY TERMINATIONS!

by Steve Fair

         Republicans since the 1930s have championed the concept of ‘smaller government.’  That wasn’t always the case.  Lincoln and Republicans in the 1860s believed expansion of government’s footprint would save the nation.  Democrats, who controlled the southern states opposed growing government.

     Twentieth century Republicans and Democrats reversed their beliefs and under the leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt the Ds became advocates for more bureaucracy.  1930s Republicans opposed many of FDR’s New Deal policies and the script was flipped.  Three observations:

     First, policy positions are about votes.  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, both Parties took positions they believed would influence western voters.  As America expanded west, appealing to those voters was critical to electoral success.  Tell ‘em what they want to hear was the order of the day.  Not much different than today.  In the early days of western expansion, businesses needed infrastructure, a stable currency and help with tariffs.  Both Parties willingly provided the help, but Republicans took the position of less government regulation. 

     Second, neither Party is for limited government.  Both want government regulation.  They just differ in how much they want.  Republican elected officials claim to want government downsized/rightsized/optimized during campaigning, but fail to deliver on reducing government’s footprint when elected.  Republicans and Democrats are always trying to pin the federal deficit on each other, but the truth is both Parties have embraced deficit spending to keep government growing.  Congress has control of the purse and bears the bulk of the responsibility. 

     Third, will the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) work?  President Trump has appointed billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head up the unofficial government agency.  In a Wall Street Journal op/ed last week, they wrote the aim to cut $500 billion of the next year’s federal budget.  That’s a start, but the U.S. government spent $1.7 trillion more in 2023 than they took in.  The total federal budget was $6.13 trillion in 2023.  Musk claims America is headed to bankruptcy if spending isn’t reigned in. There are nearly 3 million federal employees.  About 2% of employed Americans work for the government, a number that has remained stable for the past decade.  Government is the 15^th largest employer in America, larger than the agriculture and mining industries.   

        Musk and Ramaswamy say they will target spending that is unauthorized by Congress, as well as programs agencies implement that aren’t in line with legislator’s intentions.  They also want to cut the number of federal employees.  Since COVID, a large number of federal employees work from home.  Musk and Ramaswamy want to require them to be in the office five days a week.  They predict that policy change will result in ‘a wave of voluntary terminations.’ 

     Musk is not timid when it comes to making hard decisions.  When he bought Twitter (now X) in 2022, he slashed the workforce by 80%.  The company went from 8,000 employees to 1,500.  The diversity and inclusion departments, and the content moderation teams were the most impacted.  The layoffs shocked the social media industry and many believed it would tank the company.  Because Twitter was losing money, Musk said the cuts were necessary to make it viable.  The newly branded X is not yet profitable, it is moving closer. 

     The duo may actually begin the process of fulfilling a century old GOP promise to reduce the size of government, but don’t believe it until you see it.