Keep Firing Federal Freeloaders

Federal employment is at its lowest since the mid-1960s. Has the country fallen apart without the Washington bureaucracy holding it all together? Hardly.

Donald Trump was elected to accomplish a number of objectives. One of them was to cut, and hard, the federal administrative state. The mission has not been accomplished, but after a year, the federal workforce has fallen from more than 3 million to about 2.7 million, roughly where it was six decades ago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Like a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it’s a good start. But cutting the federal leviathan by roughly a 10th — the largest peacetime downsizing ever, says the Cato Institute — is not enough. Even with the reduction in workers, the effort did not produce less spending.

So two things need to happen: The effort to cut the federal employment needs to continue and spending has to be slashed.

When the job cuts began a year ago, we noted the “the wails and screeching breakdowns over the injustice of federal workers losing their jobs are ear-piercing.” Google’s AI, which too often seems to parrot the Democratic Party line, warns that “federal workforce cuts threaten to degrade essential public services, trigger widespread economic damage outside D.C., and cause a massive loss of institutional expertise. Critics warn of slower Social Security, tax delays, weakened agency effectiveness, and reliance on costlier contractors, with 64% of the public concerned about losing experienced staff.”

Please, please give us “a massive loss of institutional expertise” and “weakened agency effectiveness,” because the experts have shown they are not worthy of the title while weaker agencies mean more liberty for the rest of us.

Deeper cuts to the federal workforce would by no means be catastrophic. It’s absurd to believe that lopping off chunks of the administrative state will cause “economic damage outside D.C.” Markets perform better when they are left alone, meaning more wealth and job creation. The bureaucracy is a dead rather than invisible hand on economic growth.

We have to reiterate what we said a little more than a year ago: Washington should not be running a jobs program and handing out employment for life. Any thoughts that federal employees are in the business of “public service” are erroneous.

Not all but surely most are there to serve themselves and their party, which they have generously funded with their taxpayer-provided salaries. (Nearly 84% of all federal worker donations to presidential candidates in 2024 went to Kamala Harris.) It’s a mistake to assume that just because someone draws a federal paycheck that they are wise, hardworking, incorruptible, never driven by their own interests but only those of the people they work for. They are humans, not angels.

In the year since the reductions began, the economy has been growing and inflation has fallen from 3% to 2.4% The only unrest we see in the streets is being wrought by Democrats who have been incited by other Democrats to rampage against ICE officers enforcing federal law. The environment hasn’t been spoiled nor have our resources been depleted. Intellectual pursuit and cultural life have been poisoned not due job losses in the District of Columbia but because the Democrats have become radical degenerates. The Republicans, over the opposition of the Democrats, are trying to root out political corruption and restore confidence to our elections.

Ripping out the bureaucracy will not yield chaos but will instead deliver the immense benefits of the Democrats losing their workforce, “the one that keeps them in power even when the GOP has held the White House and both chambers of Congress, and expands it when Democrats are in the majority and occupying the executive branch.”

So keep chopping, Mr. President. It’s the righteous thing to do.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board