Has President Trump suckered Democrats and the Deep State into a trap that will enable a radical downsizing of the federal bureaucracy? In only five more days of the already "longest government shutdown in history" (25 days and counting, as of today), a heretofore obscure threshold will be reached, enabling permanent layoffs of bureaucrats furloughed 30 days or more.
Don't believe me that federal bureaucrats can be laid off? Well, in bureaucratese, a layoff is called a RIF – a Reduction in Force – and of course, it comes with a slew of civil service protections. But, if the guidelines are followed, bureaucrats can be laid off – as in no more job. It is all explained by Michael Roberts here (updated after the beginning of the partial shutdown):
A reduction in force is a thoughtful and systematic elimination of positions. For all practical purposes, a government RIF is the same thing as a layoff. ...Organizations must stick to predetermined criteria when sorting out what happens to each employee. They must communicate with employees how and why decisions are made. ...In deciding who stays and who goes, federal agencies must take four factors into account:1. Tenure2. Veteran status3. Total federal civilian and military service4. PerformanceAgencies cannot use RIF procedures to fire bad employees.
A lot of procedures must be followed, and merit ("performance") is the last consideration, but based on the criteria above, employees already furloughed can be laid off ("RIFed") once they have been furloughed for 30 days or 22 work days:
When agencies furlough employees for more than 30 calendar days or 22 discontinuous work days, they must use RIF procedures.An employee can be terminated or moved into an available position[.]
This seems to be what was referenced in this remarkable essay written by an "unidentified senior Trump official" published in the Daily Caller, which vouches for the authenticity of the author and explains that it is protecting him from adverse career consequences should the name become known. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing.
The purported senior official makes the case that devotion to "process" eats up most of the time of federal bureaucrats and is also used by enemies of President Trump's initiatives to stymie the legitimate orders issued by his senior officials:
On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don't feel like doing what they are told, they don't.Why would they? We can't fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position – some do this in the same position for more than a decade.They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands – administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. "Process is your friend" is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.
Then the senior official notes what I have just called the "trap":
Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president's agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president's agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.
Those officials who waste time and stymie the president's initiatives now are not present because they are not categorized as "essential."
Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. ...President Trump can end this abuse. Senior officials can reprioritize during an extended shutdown, focus on valuable results and weed out the saboteurs. We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them.
Keep in mind that saboteurs cannot be individually identified and RIFed, but they can be included in the layoffs if they meet the criteria above in terms of seniority and service, and they must be given 60 days' notice. But once they are gone, they are no longer free to obstruct using the "process" as their friend, because they are gone.
You can expect lawsuits on every conceivable point, and I suspect that the definition of "furlough" will be one matter of dispute.
If this was the plan all along, it would explain why President Trump goaded Chuck and Nancy in his televised meeting with them last year, boasting that he would claim credit for the shutdown. How could they resist a prolonged shutdown when he made it so easy to blame him?
President Trump has proven that he is a "disruptor" who changes the framework of thinking on major issues by refusing to accept the "givens" – the assumptions of how things always have been done and therefore always must be done.
So who is the "senior official"? I don't know, but I think Stephen Miller is the sort of bold thinker who might volunteer to telegraph the strategy just five days before the deadline. Give Chuck and Nancy something to think about and probably reject as unthinkable. Then they can't complain that they weren't warned once the trap is sprung.
Such a mass RIF would be the Trump version of Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers when they went on an illegal strike in 1981. That was completely unexpected by his enemies, vehemently criticized, and successful.
Among other benefits, it taught the leaders of the USSR that Ronald Reagan was a man whose threats cannot be dismissed as mere rhetoric. If you think that Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Angela Merkel, and any other foreign leaders would not draw the same conclusion from a massive RIF, then you are kidding yourself.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (cropped).
My theory may be completely wrong, but I pray that it is not.
Hat tip: Clarice Feldman
Monica Showalter adds: Slate of all places has a useful chart on which agencies have the most RIFs on the line. Surprise, surprise: It's where the bureaucrats most in need of layoffs happen to roost. Update: This is from 2013, but the proportions of furloughed "non-essential" staff likely are similar.
A new statement from the Office of Management and Budget provides cold comfort for federal bureaucrats worried that furloughs during the partial shutdown could become permanent layoffs, as long as Democrats refuse to give in and fund the border barrier.
There will be no immediate layoffs (what the federal government calls reductions in force – or RIFs) if and when the current partial shutdown passes the 30-day mark in four more days. As I explained yesterday in "Trump's shutdown trap?," federal law requires RIFs when federal employees are furloughed more than 30 days.
But after the matter was raised and widely discussed, the OMB issued a statement that indicates that it would require an actual reorganization plan that would make furloughed positions permanently identified as unnecessary, in order for the furloughs to be RIFed. Nicole Ogrysko writes in the Federal News Network:
Agencies won't need to consider targeted layoffs, otherwise known as reductions-in-force (RIFs), if the current partial government shutdown continues for another few days.While federal statute typically instructs agencies to RIF targeted groups of employees who have been placed on furlough status for 30 days or more, the regulations don't apply to emergency furlough situations, the Office of Management and Budget confirmed Tuesday. ...There are two kinds of furloughs. "Administrative furloughs" are planned events by an agency "designed to absorb reductions necessitated by downsizing, reduced funding, lack of work or any budget situation other than a lapse in appropriations," according to the Office of Personnel Management."Shutdown furloughs," also called "emergency furloughs," occur during lapses in appropriations.OPM's 2015 guidance on shutdown furloughs also clarifies the matter."Reductions in force furlough regulations and SES competitive furlough requirements are not applicable to emergency shutdown furloughs because the ultimate duration of an emergency shutdown furlough is unknown at the outset and is dependent entirely on congressional action, rather than agency action," OPM guidance reads. "The RIF furlough regulations and SES competitive furlough requirements, on the other hand, contemplate planned, foreseeable, money-saving furloughs that, at the outset, are planned to exceed 30 days."
This emphatically does not rule out the shutdown trap hypothesis that I presented. It will take some time for reorganization plans to be prepared, but once they are revealed after the 30-day deadline is reached, the "shutdown furloughs" become "administrative furloughs," and the RIF layoffs are possible.
As the anonymous senior Trump administration official whom I quoted yesterday noted, in the absence of bureaucrats with time on their hands and no inclination to help the Trump agenda, a lot is getting accomplished. As that process continues, after the 30-day mark is reached, it will be possible to create a downsizing plan, identifying units that could easily get by with a fraction of their current staff, or even be reorganized out of existence.
The head of the OMB, Mick Mulvaney, currently does not have a lot of spare time, serving as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and as interim White House Chief of Staff (a 24/7 job in its own right). But if he is on board (and why wouldn't he be?), he could well designate a team to prepare quick plans for downsizing, now that the various agencies have seen how little they need so many of the furloughed bureaucrats. That would make the furloughs qualify for RIFs.
Of course, there would be a dispute on when the clock starts ticking on the 30 days – with the original "shutdown furlough" or from the date of the hypothetical downsizing plan I mention. If the latter – a delayed start of the clock ticking – then the pressure on the Democrats to cave in and end the shutdown would amp up. Imagine if Schumer and Pelosi started hearing from federal bureaucrats waiting to be RIFed if another 30 days go by. Would they be willing to say to them that it's more important to have no border barriers than for their jobs to be preserved? They would have a time bomb of layoffs of government employees, a huge Democrat constituency, affecting many individual members of the House with large numbers of federal employee constituents. I can imagine quite a few House Democrats bolting from Pelosi if she persists in the shutdown, refusing to talk or compromise.
If this plan is followed and a downsizing proposal is officially revealed, Trump either gets an end to the shutdown or gets to downsize the federal bureaucracy.
The U.S. federal government (more precisely, only one quarter of the government) was shut down for 36 days. Opinions of this shutdown, as expected, vary. In the left camp, a victory is celebrated, and in the right camp, the range of assessments extends from bitterness of defeat (the majority) to cautious optimism like "well, we will see who wins" (a minority).
However, an idea that does not occur to anyone to consider is one of Trump's victory, no matter how unusual it sounds.
Why is this view not considered? Probably because it is based on the emotional background of the conflict – that is, the personal confrontation between Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi, who is reveling in her newly acquired power. However, let's ask ourselves: would Trump's position change if, instead of Pelosi, there was someone else? Hardly anyone could argue that it was Pelosi who determined Trump's political moves.
In other words, would Trump have initiated a partial government shutdown if someone else owned a gavel in the House of Representatives (Republican, Democrat, or someone else – that doesn't matter anymore)? Of course he would, because his main strategic task is the wall on the southern border – not just a wall as a barrier, but a wall as a symbol of the sovereignty of the country.
To achieve this goal, Trump needs to drive the opposition into a deliberately uncomfortable corner – so uncomfortable that the opposition will begin to seriously think about its strategic role: either stubborn obstructionism or a constructive opposition.
What can make the Democrats do this? Only public opinion. The opposition of Trump and Pelosi should be reconsidered from this point of view – not from the standpoint of the opposition of the gladiator Trump and the gladiator Pelosi, but from the standpoint of winning the sympathies of the spectators in the political Coliseum. Then the idea of Trump's winning immediately moves from the realm of fantasy to the realm of reality.
For about one month, Trump slowly, step by step, squeezed out from the media narrative all the informational garbage not related to the problem of illegal immigration. In a month, everything suddenly became secondary: North Korea, Syria, economy, trade wars with China, the unemployment rate, and racial problems. No one is participating in heated debates over the fact that the number of vacant jobs in America has exceeded the number of unemployed. Few people outside Washington are interested in the vicissitudes of the Mueller investigation. Except for small fringe groups, no one raises the issue of impeachment. Everything has faded into the background except the wall.
As a result, Trump skillfully imposed his agenda on America. As part of this agenda, there came a clear understanding that two ideologies clashed in Washington – one that aims to turn America into a country akin to Venezuela, and the other to build a wall on the southern border. The tasks set by these ideologies are serious strategic goals, and Trump's achievement is the political equivalent of a successful reversal of the Titanic right before an iceberg encounter.
Thanks to Trump, no one in America is left with any doubt about the actual positions of the two opposing sides. It is now clear to all American citizens that the Republicans' position is to close the border and open the government, while the Democrats prefer to open the border and close the government.
Trump has skillfully arranged the scenery for the next stage of political drama. At the same time, he wisely saved his trump card for the final act, either in the form of a declaration of national emergency,or the wall built by the U.S. Army (the law allows this to be done even without the consent of Congress). Moreover, the Democrats are unaware: for some reason, they consider the partial government shutdown advantageous for them. If for the Democrats the upcoming 21 days of negotiations with Trump are a sign of their victory, then for Trump, 21 days of negotiations are the gun on the wall, which, according to Chekhov, must necessarily fire in the third act.
Declaring a state of emergency in America is a fairly frequent thing. President Obama declared national emergencies 12 times, and President G.W. Bush 13 times. By law, a national emergency may be declared by the president for only one year, but, as a rule, all presidents extend their own emergency declarations and the emergency declarations of their predecessors.
Trump extended all the emergencies declared by Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton. In addition, Trump extended the national emergency associated with Iran, which President Carter had previously declared. Currently, there are 31 active national emergencies in the United States. For reference, the U.S. Congress has the right to cancel a declaration of a national emergency, but only if both houses of Congress vote for it with a two-thirds majority.
The Democrats still haven't realized what happened to them. It seems that none of them read Machiavelli. After all, they just had to back down and quietly lose a small (only about 0.1% of the U.S. federal budget) political battle over the wall on the border with Mexico, but at the same time save their entire army of supporters, their entire reputation, and their entire political capital that would enable them to confront Trump in the next stage of political struggle.
The Democrats went all in. What the Democrats have done is worse than a betrayal of American citizens; this is a mistake.
Note that one of the key players, Mueller, understood what was going on and tried to change the course of the news cycle imposed by Trump. Mueller's photogenic arrest of Roger Stone had stopped the talk about illegal immigration and the wall for a few hours. However, this did not last long.
In conclusion, let's remind the Democrats about one of the best known of Murphy's Laws: "If everything seems to be going well, you have overlooked something."Newly elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants a number of laws changed that will ultimately redistribute income away from people who earned it and toward people who haven’t earned it. She says it is simply unfair that some people have so much and other have so little.
Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose ancestor was the Socialist Party of America..
The DSA has some very specific goals. They want to end private ownership of a number of industries, especially those industries whose products are viewed as “necessities.” In addition, the DSA wants to “democratize” private businesses in order to force owners to give workers control of the business.
Ocasio-Cortez has suggested that the highest marginal tax rate should be increased from the current 37% to 70%. She says that the government can use those extra tax dollars to pay for healthcare and higher education for all Americans.
Most Americans do not approve of these actions. History shows why. The U.S. went from birth in 1776 to being the most prosperous, most powerful and most advanced country in the world in about 150 years. This was accomplished because our capitalistic system encouraged individual freedom and individual responsibility. It is a system that rewards people who make contributions and does not reward people who do not contribute.
The U.S. has generally had low taxes. That changed somewhat in the 20thcentury when the U.S. imposed a number of new permanent taxes including the federal income tax, the social security tax, and the Medicare tax. Individual states added their own income tax, property taxes, sales taxes, and special taxes on things like gasoline and alcohol. Still, the U.S. income earner is taxed less that income earners in most other countries.
Implementing socialistic policies would result in a slow growth economy which would reduce the standard of living for all Americans. Most countries that have implemented socialism, like Cuba and Venezuela, have very poor living conditions.
Leftists cite countries like Sweden and Norway as "socialist," but delude themselves that a generous welfare state supported by a vibrant, globally competitive economy (Sweden) or petrostate wealth (Norway) is an example of socialism working well. In fact, Sweden has been cutting taxes and welfare spending so much that the total share of the economy taken in taxation declined by 5 percentage points between years 2000 and 2017 according to OECD figuresand complaints of welfare cuts are old hat. Further reform and "sweeping" tax cuts are being proposed by the new coalition government.
In those Scandinavian countries, there is a sharing culture where democratic socialism seems to fit. It is also interesting to note that these countries are hundreds of years older than the U.S. Their population base is relatively small with the total number of people equaling about 27 million. The U.S. has about 330 million people.
Despite socialism going against everything that made America great, there are a surprising number of young people who support Ocasio-Cortez, the DSA, and the concept of socialism. These millennials want the government to raise taxes on those that contribute the most and use the funds to pay for their healthcare, their higher education, and an expanded welfare program.
Although there were periods in U.S. history where the socialist movement gained some steam, never have we seen so many young people supporting socialism over capitalism. Most Americans would agree that socialism would be a complete disaster for the U.S.
The high taxes on marginal income would eliminate the incentive to invest for high income earners and reduce capital formation. In our capital-intensive economy, this would slow economic growth. “Free” healthcare and “free” higher education in addition to a higher minimum wage, increased access to food stamps and welfare and universal basic income would destroy the incentive for lower skilled workers to seek employment and improve their skills. This too would slow economic growth.
In fact, the way to reverse this trend and move these “lost souls” from support of socialism to support of capitalism is to do exactly what President Trump is doing. That is, bring back economic prosperity. Once these people experience true economic prosperity, socialism will lose its appeal.
Socialism has its appeal today because the U.S. economy has been mired in slow growth for nearly two decades. Annual economic growth hasn’t exceeded 4% since 2000. Growth of 4% or more would provide opportunity for all qualified Americans. There would be far less underemployment, and there would be higher wages with more opportunity.
This long period of economic stagnation has resulted in the problems we see today that make socialism seem favorable. The slow growth of the past two decades did provide opportunity for those at the top. But those at the lower income levels saw little or no opportunity. As a result, they saw no increase in income. To someone with nothing, Socialism is appealing.
President Trump quickly moved away from socialistic behavior when he removed burdensome and counterproductive government regulations that were designed to protect consumers, but really just added to the cost to business and slowed growth. Then Trump lowered taxes for all Americans, including the highest income earners and corporations. Since then the economy has grown at more than a 3% annual rate.
President Trump is restoring freedom to the economic system. He is trying to bring true prosperity back to the U.S. If he is successful -- and that will be difficult because every Democrat, the mainstream media, and even some members of his own party oppose him -- Socialism will lose its appeal. For the sake of the future of our country, let’s hope he is successful.
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