"Thank you for your civil service."

     "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning we want them to not want to go to work. . . . We want to put them in trauma."

          Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget

 

You read that right. The new head of the OMB said he wanted federal employees to be so miserable they would quit their jobs, leaving the federal government unable to do its work. Watch.

College classmate Erich Almasy reflects on a hinge point in his life, that period in young adulthood when one makes decisions that send one's life in one direction or another. He and classmate Cynthia Blanton, now his wife, considered government service, then looked elsewhere.

Young people are entering the workforce getting signals on what direction to point their lives. Some are economic signals; where the jobs are, and what the pay is. Some are matters of image and brand; whether an organization has a future or whether it is a dead end. The Trump-Musk-DOGE administration is sending signals that in civil and military service one can be fired abruptly at random, by a boss who doesn't value you or the job you do. 

The U.S. president viewed Musk's random cuts, including mass dismissal of all new or newly-promoted people, and wrote, in all caps:

"ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE. REMEMBER, WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE, BUT ULTIMATELY, TO MAKE GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. MAGA!

We see a bad boss who lacks respect for his employees. We see a risky career in a job that might disappear right after one has quit another job, moved, and bought a home with a mortgage. The federal government has repositioned from a bedrock of trust and reliability to its opposite.

This issue is personal with me. My mother was a hard-working 20-year employee of the Bureau of Land Management. In my youth I fought forest fires, digging fire lines in front of advancing fires. It was dangerous work. A gust of wind might accelerate a fire faster than my fellow hotshot crew members and I could build a containment line around it. I never doubted that my boss, and boss's boss, and management further up the line considered my work important.

Here is Erich's story.

Erich and Cynthia as young adults, at a costume ball

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

When I met my wife in college, I finished a semester early, and she had an extra year to go. She took a year off to save money (we were poor kids) to work at a think tank in Washington, D.C. She considered joining the foreign service and working her way to up to becoming a U.S. ambassador somewhere. Her time in the nation’s capital taught her that ambassadorships are rewards, not merit-based appointments. We both chose to attend business school after college.

I considered taking the Civil Service exam before or after joining the Peace Corps. I drew a high draft lottery number and was relatively safe. My dad (who served in the Canadian Army for six years during World War II) felt that service was owed to his or her country. Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and William Proxmire from my native Wisconsin nearly convinced me that government service was noble and worthwhile.

Nearly. The Nixon and Reagan years left me quite melancholy about who worked in government and why.

When people thank military personnel for “their service,” I wonder if they’ve ever thanked any bureaucrats they encounter or just yelled at them over the phone or across a desk. If they are like me, I doubt it. About this month’s massive layoffs, guess what? One-third of government employees are veterans, compared to only five percent in the private workforce. The layoffs will disproportionately affect those we thank. Government employee numbers have not increased in fifty years, while the United States population grew nearly 70 percent. Fewer IRS workers, Medicare administrators, USDA inspectors, and FDA clinicians will mean more fraud, illness, and delay of essential services, not less.

Who are we kidding? Everybody thinks the government workforce should be downsized until the Postal Service stops Saturday deliveries, the IRS delays their refund, and the appeal of their Social Security disability claim goes unresolved. Assume we get through this massive dislocation of a system that, by and large, works well without a nuclear accident, air catastrophe, cybersecurity blowout, or utility blackout. When will you feel safe boarding an airline or filing your (confidential) tax return again? It’s not just this debacle that is concerning. The government has shut down ten times since 1981, and our employees go without paychecks each time. Would you work for somebody who misses payroll and fires you without justification, notice, or severance?

If we want the best government, shouldn’t we hire the best, pay them the best, and ensure they want to stay? I like the most intelligent, most vigorous people watching over me and mine. DEI may have been overdone, but it did offer access to excellent people who had previously been shut out of government service. A DOGE workplace will ultimately become just as toxic to white males, not only women, people of color, LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities. Do the smart-ass DOGEmites too young to rent a car have enough empathy or wisdom to envision the unintended consequences of what they are doing? They cannot even admit mistakes - gee, $80 million, $80 billion, what’s the diff?

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