Opinion - Only career civil servants know where the real government waste is

Yahoo

01-04-2025

The Trump administration's drastic disruption of the federal government — and the attempted dismantling of the federal civil service — continues. There are plenty of inflammatory headlines in that regard. But career public servants take an oath to serve American citizens efficiently and effectively, and I want to give them — or at least our like-minded colleagues — the chance to work collaboratively with their political superiors to make this work.
I know, because I've been there. I have been a federal civil servant, as well as a presidential appointee in the first Trump administration, least until I resigned over the initial issuance of Schedule F and its potential politicization of the civil service.
I know from years of firsthand experience that it will take both sides, political appointees and career civil servants, working collaboratively together to make this work. But getting both sides together is a challenge these days, because whether many of my colleagues like it or not, the American people voted for what's going on — at least the 'what,' if not the 'how' of it.
Although the latter has resulted in lots of mistakes on the part of the Trump administration — some deliberate, some inadvertent — I believe that collaboration between appointees and career civil servants has a far better chance of success.
At the very least, such collaboration would shine a light on those federal government services that may be disrupted, interrupted or lost altogether, so that voters can judge for themselves.
Here's how to do it.
First, contrary to the DOGE's 'hatchet' approach, the Office of Management and Budget director, in collaboration with his career staff, needs to use his 'scalpel' to determine exactly what each Cabinet department and agency needs to look like when the dust of disruption settles. That includes performance metrics, so that Americans can tell if they are getting their money's worth. Then the president needs to turn his agency heads loose to develop how best to achieve that end state.
But that needs to happen in partnership with their career civil servants. The latter can help figure out how best to get there, whether it's through voluntary and incentivized attrition (including deferred resignations and monetary buyouts), closures and realignments along the lines of the military's Base Realignment and Closure program, or reductions in force. Why? Because career civil servants know where the bodies are buried, where the fat and waste are … and there's plenty of it.
Indeed, that's why civil servants are there. And that will take trust between both sides, which is especially difficult to come by these days. However, whether it's Musk and his DOGE minions or newly confirmed agency heads, the Trump administration's representatives need to take a deep breath and then trust and involve the career employees if all this is to work.
Just as importantly, that trust must be reciprocated. It also takes trust on the part of career civil servants, and too many of them have already demonstrated that they'd rather fight on social media than do their jobs. They need to remember the oath that they took and trust that new political appointees have the best interests of a majority of American voters at heart — they do not believe so at present. Maybe then, the messy 'how' of all this may be walked back. I know, because I've been on both sides of this, and it can work.
But all of us need to accept the fact that we live in a democracy, that American voters have spoken and, as for the career civil servants amongst them, they need to leave whatever personal partisan views they may have — views that, as American citizens, they are entitled to — at the office door and help political appointees do it the right (and lawful) way.
Will this be painful? Probably. And it may not be successful. After all, it takes two to dance, and one side or the other may end up without a partner. But the Trump administration and agency career staffs (those that are left) must work together if this is going to work for the American people.
And work it must. Career leaders know where the real inefficiencies are. If they don't want to go along with the pain that comes with trying to identify and fix those inefficiencies, they should be reassigned or fired. But, by the same token, if agency leaders — or Musk's DOGE minions — don't want to trust career leaders who demonstrate that they are up to the challenge, then the same ought to go for them.
However, all of us need to be realistic. There's only so much 'waste, fraud and abuse' to be eliminated. At some point, DOGE efficiency experts or agency appointees, working with their career staffs or by themselves, are going to have to bite the bullet and cut the 'bone and muscle' of federal (and perhaps state and local) programs if they hope to achieve their apparent cost-cutting mandate.
That's exactly how the system is supposed to work, so that voters can judge for themselves.
Dr. Ronald Sanders is the former chair of the Federal Salary Council.
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