ArcaMax

Call me a contrarian, but today I’m going to do something unpopular: I’m going to stand up for federal employees – and, while I’m at it, for city, county and state employees, too. You know, all those people Elon Musk and Donald Trump snidely dismiss as “bureaucrats.”

Unlike most presidents, who take office promising to create new jobs, Donald Trump’s doing just the opposite: rushing to kill jobs. He’s given unelected Anti-Jobs Czar Elon Musk authority to fire tens of thousands of federal workers – in order to get the money he needs to give billionaires like Musk another tax cut.

First, let’s stipulate that there’s always fat to cut in government: a lot of overlap and too many programs that no longer serve any purpose kept needlessly alive. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.

In 1978, California Governor Jerry Brown did it the right way. Forced to slash state spending across-the-board after passage of Proposition 13, he formed a task force to look for places to cut. There were three of us: Finance Director Roy Bell, Chief of Staff Dick Silberman, and me, director of the Office of Planning and Research. We met with every cabinet secretary and department head. We asked them to justify every dollar and asked them where cuts might be made. We then presented our recommendations to the governor, who made the final decisions.

Give Brown credit. It was a painful process, but it was handled with planning, investigation, intelligence, evidence, care and compassion – the exact opposite of the meat-axe approach Elon Musk is taking today, with Donald Trump’s blessing. In fact, the only surprise this week when Trump signed yet another executive order giving yet more power to Musk was that the world’s richest man was standing alongside the Resolute desk, not sitting behind it.

Musk began by asking all 2.3 million civilian federal employees to resign by early February, in return for a questionable “promise” to pay them through September 30. That grace period having ended, he’s now begun firing scores of employees, starting at the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration and the United States Agency for International Development, whose ranks he’s shrunk from 14,000 to about 200.

In some cases, these mass firings are being done against the law. In every case, they’re carried out with no public hearings and no consideration of how key these jobs are, how they’ve been performed, or what happens to the important work done by federal agencies after most employees are gone.

In the Oval Office, Musk told reporters it’s a war of the bureaucracy v. democracy. Which just shows how clueless and heartless he is. Bureaucrats aren’t the enemy of democracy. Bureaucrats are the ones who deliver the benefits of democracy to millions who depend on them.

Bureaucrats are, first of all, middle-class Americans who could probably be making a lot more in the private sector, but who chose a life of public service. They’re people who live paycheck to paycheck, with families to support, kids to put through school, and bills to pay at the end of the month – something Musk knows nothing about.

Federal employees are not, as Trump claims, the “deep state.” For the most part, they don’t take sides. In fact, they’re prohibited by law from engaging in politics. They just do their job, regardless of who’s in the White House.

And federal employees are not, as Musk claims, corrupt. He insists that many bureaucrats are on the take – using federal funds to line their own pockets – without giving ONE example. Besides, if there were any employees breaking the law, Congress provided the solution: an inspector general to police every federal agency. But, of course, inspectors general can’t do that any longer – because Trump fired them all!

Federal employees are not the enemy. They’re people we count on: to deliver the mail; inspect food production facilities; develop and approve safe, new prescription drugs; provide security at our airports; maintain our federal highways; issue our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid checks; staff our embassies around the world; oversee our great national parks and forests; issue passports; deliver clean air and clean water; keep America competitive in trade and energy, and so much more, including cracking down on criminals who break the law (but not politicians, unless they, too, break the law).

Public employees deserve our respect and thanks and maybe a hug. They keep America in business. America would grind to a halt without them.

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(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)

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