“It’s a dark news day,” a family member told me on Wednesday.
What could she have been referring to? I thought maybe she was referring to the confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, but when dealing with Trump-era news cycles, you can never assume you know what anyone is talking about.
It’s a minefield. If I guess wrong, I could be inserting a new topic into a conversation about politics that I already don’t want to have. So I played dumb.
“Trump is firing the whole federal workforce,” she told me. “He wants to install loyalists.”
Readers of this column know I am a Trump skeptic. But I am trying to stay positive to survive the next four years and I wish him the best. Plus, I feel the need to defend him against misinformation, which gives me credibility when criticizing him, and I actually like his action on trimming the workforce.
The truth is that Trump is not trying to fire the whole federal workforce, but he probably does want loyalists — people who share his vision.
I responded that Trump offered buyouts to most federal employees and this was an effective and humane way to clear people out. Staffers who take the buyout get paid through September but will likely stop working much sooner than that.
It’s also not unprecedented. In 1994, then-President Bill Clinton — a Democrat, in case anyone has forgotten — offered buyouts of $25,000 to try to trim the federal workforce by around a quarter of a million staffers.
Of everything Trump has done during the past eight or so years, on its face this is one of the most sensible actions he’s taken (though there are legitimate questions as to whether he currently has the power to do this). I couldn’t believe this was what was upsetting her. This was the strangest case of Trump derangement syndrome I had ever witnessed.
The federal government is bloated and there are career bureaucrats who A) might have outlived their usefulness but can’t easily be fired because of civil service protections and B) don’t agree with Trump’s policy objectives. I don’t know how many people fall into at least one of these two categories, but many are about to self-select because this seems like a pretty good deal.
“That’s if he pays them,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust him.”
At this point, I felt like I was listening to a rant from MSNBC’s Joy Reid. As I wrote last week, so often when hearing the political opinions of people in my personal life, it seems as though the person I’m talking to is simply parroting something said on television.
Buyouts are simple: You take the deal, sign some papers, get a check and move on with your life. This is why Trump would even offer the deal in the first place, it’s significantly easier and cheaper in the long run.
If you stay, you’re agreeing to follow the rules and align with the vision of the administration. However, you might still get laid off later on, which is why it’s much better to take the deal if you aren’t 100% committed. Yes, the way the Administration went about it, asking staff to reply to an email with one word, “resign,” is a strange approach and it could leave employees in a bad position if it’s determined Trump doesn’t currently have the power to offer the buyouts, but in general buyouts are a solid approach.
“He doesn’t even pay his lawyers,” she added. I didn’t have time to fact check this and honestly didn’t care. Trump has probably stiffed a few people in his lifetime, but he seems surrounded by lawyers at all times and I can’t imagine they’re all working pro bono. I dropped it.
I ignored a comment she made about how this will affect the unemployment rate. Who cares? Most of these people will find other jobs and have an eight-month head start to do it. The rest will likely retire. The creation of a federal tent city — a Trumpville — is not imminent.
There is a logical reason why federal employees are so hard to fire. The government wouldn’t operate very well in transition if every new administration cleaned house and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 swept in a bunch of labor protections.
Incoming Democratic administrations aren’t as worried about being ideologically aligned with the federal workforce because so many federal workers are Democrats.
But it’s different for Republicans, especially Trump, who has been met with resistance constantly from within the ranks. He has called for an end to COVID-era telework situations, which has ruffled some feathers and he promised to trim the bureaucracy and this is an effective way to begin that process.
Again, I’m not sure why this was bothering this person so much, but I thought I could hear MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in the background.
Look everyone, four years is a long time. It’s going to be unbearable if half the country is freaking out over everything he does and the other half is always explaining away bad actions.
As with the last Trump administration, some things will be good, others will not. But can we try to stay objective here?
Matt Fleming is a columnist for the Southern California News Group.