My favorite president during his term was Ronald Regan. He was the one who waged war on Big Government. “If it moves, tax it, if it keeps moving, regulate it, if it stops moving, subsidize it”, etc. I have always been afraid of deficit spending, and I thought Reagan was going to fully address the problem by cutting spending via reducing the size of government and increasing revenues through supply side economics. Well, supply side economics (cut tax rates, expand the pie, and generate more overall revenues) sounds great but has never worked in practice. In 1983, when Reagan entered office, the national debt was $1.3 trillion and when he left in 1989, it had more than doubled.
In 1989, the size of the civilian workforce in the executive branch was 3.1 million. At that time, the population of the US was 245 million. Today the population is 344 million or 40% larger. (The GDP has grown much more than 40% over that period.) So, you would expect the civilian workforce of the executive branch would have increased by at least 40%, right? You would be very wrong. According to this chart, https://usafacts.org/…/how-many-people-work-for-the…/ the civilian workforce at the end of 2024 was 3.0 million – smaller than it was when Reagan left office. Relative to the population, the current federal civilian workforce is over 30% smaller than it was after 8 years of the Gipper doing his best to shrink the size of the federal government.
(Check out the chart and give Obama/Biden credit for cutting the size of government to the bone.)
And yet, Trump/Musk/Putin have convinced the MAGAs that the size of the federal workforce needs to be slashed and those who remain, terrorized. Why are they doing this and why are you Trumpters cheering them on? I think I know the answer to the first question, but I just don’t get why my friends on the Trump team are so bamboozled.
There are two basic reasons why Trump/Musk want to make you believe they need to decimate the federal civil servants. First, the executive branch of the federal government has restricted and/or prosecuted Trump and Musk. The federal government to them has been their tormenter. So, it’s payback time. Also, if they are allowed to effectively destroy the institutions of our government, then they can replace them with something more to their personal liking. (Now that will be exercising power – something intoxicating to such men – at an unprecedented scale.) The third team member, Vladimir Putin, simply wants to weaken the effectiveness of the United States. Every dedicated and competent worker that leaves US government service, the less effective our government will be. Putin has to be thrilled by the level of incompetence and inexperience in Trump’s cabinet. A leader can only be as effective as those who work for him/her. Our federal government is going to be so dysfunctional over the next four years and Putin will love it.
What I don’t comprehend is why so many bright patriotic men like Mike Norton, John Hashagen, Mark Couhig, and Daniel Runkle think that what Trump/Musk/Putin are doing is a good thing. Nothing they have posted so far explains why they are ok with the dedicated competent people in the federal civilian workforce being fired or subjugated and new incompetent sycophants brought in is a good thing. It is not. It is a disaster in the making.
Note: if you study the chart, you will see that the all time low since Reagan was when O’Bama was president (2.73 M). It increased to a high of over 3.1 M later under Trump.