I applaud what Trump/Musk have done to date. Finding corruption is always delightful.
It was said yesterday that Musk is saving about $1 billion per day. Well, that is more admirable than anything else done to date in the USA. But as plainly and frankly as I can, that is small potatoes!
Let me begin by saying I do not have access to the data Musk has had access to, and I am basing my recommendations on bits of information obtained by listening to a very few.
First, Mark Levin said on his Sunday show the following: that there are 2.4 million federal employees, excluding the military and postal service. I knew this already. But what he went on to say, I did not know. THERE ARE 7 MILLION CONTRACTORS WORKING FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, NOT INCLUDING THE MILITARY AND POSTAL CONTRACTORS.
That is nearly THREE TIMES the number of resources than federal employees. Now, if Trump/Musk were my client, I would be telling them to go after the low hanging fruit. Rather than going after civil servants which have protections once they get beyond three years+ of service, it would be easy to eliminate the contractors working for the federal government, even the military and postal service, all included, add up to 10 million contractors. There are no protections for contractors working for the federal government. They are more expensive than employees, and they have zero civil service protection. With the stroke of one pen, Trump could reduce the cost of resources working for the federal government by $500 billion to $1.5 trillion per year.
Doing this far eclipses anything Musk is doing. That is one day's work. And while perhaps not all 100% of the contractors need to go, I am a believer that the 80/20 rule applies to almost all things. Start off eliminating 80%, or even 50% working to 80%.
Why is this a better approach? Because the UGLY TRUTH is that some portion of what Trump/Musk are doing will be stopped by the courts, including the Supreme Court putting a halt to what they are doing. Count on it.
Take US AID as just one example. A federal employee told me that only 293 folks at US AID will get to keep their jobs, that the rest of roughly 12,000 employees will be handed their head. As a guesstimate, I am supposing that 3,-5,000 of the 12,000 have less than three years of service or are temporary employees with no protections under civil service rules. For the 7,000+/- that have more than three years of service, I see the courts siding with the employees and preventing their termination. Now the above numbers are just guesstimates, for I do not have the actual data.
All this drama, and I expect much of it will be halted by our court system.
If the mission is truly about reducing government size, and particularly COST, than what I am recommending above without even seeing the data to make decisions on makes more sense, and NO DAMN DRAMA!!!
Now this accomplishes many things. It forces the federal employees to do their job, to do what contractors were doing. And for those not willing to work, guess what happens, they take a hike. So we as taxpayers realize the savings from eliminating the contractors, a much bigger cost than the employees, and it gets rid of those not willing to work a full day's work that are employees.
You want to trim government, it can be done without drama and at much higher numbers than what Musk is generating, with little to no court interference.
