The size of the American government hasn’t seen a decrease in size since the end of WWII, but President Trump would like to change that.
While the media bemoans his lack of “major legislative achievements,” he hasn’t needed major legislation to accomplish many goals, such as gutting costly regulation with the stroke of a pen. Not only that, it’s now policy that two regulations must be repealed for every new one enacted – meaning only regulations that are completely necessary would be implemented, and even more useless ones would have to be gutted to make room for it.
Not only that, Trump has implemented a hiring freeze on federal workers, though it’s now been suspended to pursue other ways to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
President Trump’s hiring freeze helped cut the size of federal government by about 9,000 employees in his first six months in office, but that is just a drop in the bucket of a workforce of more than 2.8 million, and the administration has ended the freeze to fill mission-critical positions at agencies.
The original freeze never applied across the board. Mr. Trump excluded the military and positions deemed vital to public safety and national security.
In lifting the freeze, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney said, the administration opted for a “more surgical plan” to cut the workforce.
Since then, all agencies have complied with Mr. Trump’s April memorandum ordering them to submit workforce reduction plans. The plans are being reviewed and integrated into the president’s 2019 budget, White House officials said. “We continue to move forward with governmentwide reform efforts, and agencies are actively working to right-size and align human capital resources to achieve proper and appropriate agency functions in the most efficient and effective manner,” the official said.
The 2018 budget gave a glimpse of the direction the Trump administration is heading. It called for eliminating 24,000 full-time employees across 17 agencies. One of the largest cuts was to the Environmental Protection Agency, which would have shed 3,800 jobs, or 24 percent of his workforce. Another was the Interior Department with 4,100 jobs cut, or 6.3 percent of its employees.
Back in March, Trump ordered a review of the government’s budget, stating “Today there is duplication and redundancy everywhere, billions and billions of dollars are being wasted.”
And he’s right – there are plenty of things that certain government agencies do that merely duplicate other agencies – and there’s plenty of paradoxical spending (such as how our government subsidizes tobacco farmers and funds anti-smoking campaigns).
According to the Government Accountability Office’s statistics, there have been massive cost savings so far this year from reviewing and correcting such inefficiencies:
So far, so good! Let’s keep it up, Mr. President!
Share this story if you love watching Trump cut government spending!
