From this article by Lisa Rein:
"WASHINGTON
- The Trump administration is threatening to furlough - and possibly
lay off - 150 employees at the federal personnel agency if Congress
blocks its plan to eliminate the department.
The Office of Personnel Management is preparing to send the career employees home
without pay starting on Oct. 1, according to an internal briefing
document obtained by The Washington Post. The employees could formally
be laid off after 30 days, administration officials confirmed."
"...Trump officials say that OPM is a broken agency that should be wiped clean and restarted. They cite security weaknesses that led to a massive data breach, inefficient hiring policies and a backlogged system of processing paperwork for retiring employees.
"...Most
of its functions would move into the General Services Administration,
the government's real estate and procurement arm. OPM's backlogged
security clearance system already is shifting to the Defense Department,
through legislation previously passed by Congress.
OPM's
leadership would shift from an agency director to a Senate-confirmed
deputy in the GSA and a position within the White House budget office
responsible for federal workforce policy that the president would
appoint."
"The
plan to dismantle the agency was the brainchild of a senior career
official at the budget office. Weichert, a private-sector executive
focused on improving business operations before she joined the Trump
administration, has committed to it with a vengeance.
She's
told her staff that she is "planning to play chicken with Congress,"
according to three officials familiar with the comments."
"....
A
report by a federal watchdog this week concluded that killing the
agency would hinder, not ease, the long-standing retirement claims
backlog.
“Potential
changes in organizational affiliation, policy, budget and staff may
make it difficult for OPM to plan for large-scale changes in its
operations,” the Government Accountability Office said."
Update:
Actually this update isn't about the OPM. But it is somewhat related. This article from HuffPost details the Trump administration's backtracking on plans to close Job Corps centers after a bipartisan outcry. It answers the question of, "When do Republicans not support plans to downsize government and lay off employees?" Of course the answer is, when the jobs and agencies targeted are in their districts. So doing away with OPM may prove to be more complicated than the administration thought.
Update:
Actually this update isn't about the OPM. But it is somewhat related. This article from HuffPost details the Trump administration's backtracking on plans to close Job Corps centers after a bipartisan outcry. It answers the question of, "When do Republicans not support plans to downsize government and lay off employees?" Of course the answer is, when the jobs and agencies targeted are in their districts. So doing away with OPM may prove to be more complicated than the administration thought.
One of the many curses of the managerial world is the belief of executives that in order to show their value, they must always show that they are "doing something". This something needs to be bold and decisive. A big splash is to be preferred as are as many layoffs as possible, since mass layoffs show that an executive is "tough" and "decisive" and willing to "make the hard decisions" to cause people other than themselves to suffer. And of course, to simply destroy something rather than just fix it makes the largest splash of all. Simply fixing something runs the risk of not being noticed since a series of smaller fixes can be attributed to a selection of smaller people who may then garner the all important credit.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if the OPM is really screwed up. I will assume that it is, not because it is a government organization, but because almost all organizations of that size are. Since a transfer of duties is part of the discussion, I have to assume that that OPM does something now that is important. But what I am not seeing here is a discussion of exactly what is wrong, exactly who or what is responsible, and exactly what will happen to everything that it now does if the place is shut down. And from experience, if the management doesn't know now exactly what is wrong, then they may be transferring problems that will affect the recipient organizations and destabilize them. Other things may end up being ignored and in general the inevitable unforeseen consequences that would occur in any event will be far worse. I'm afraid that all of this looks to me that this "senior career official at the budget office" is doing some executive grandstanding here in an administration that takes deregulation and "small government" to be some sort of "principles". Since such a person is not likely to say "eliminate my unit and while you're at it eliminate me as well since you won't need my services anymore", I would expect (unless this blows up in Trump's face immediately) that she will be sent with her fire ax someplace else to show more "decisiveness". Trump will take credit for the cost cut and someone else will take the blame for the damage.
What is lacking here (and is generally lacking in government) is the idea of getting buy-in. I look at things that this administration does that, who knows?, might be good ideas. But Trump never asks for buy-in, thinking that actually having to sell something on its own merits is a sign of weakness and detracts from the kind of credit as a stable genius he craves. We are always to just trust him.
Can he do it? Not, technically. The OPM is like the Federal Reserve in that it is considered "independent." The president nominates and the Senate confirms the director, but the executive branch does not -- or is not supposed to -- run it.
ReplyDeleteIt is the successor to the Civil Service Commission, which was established back in the 1800s to make sure the president wasn't appointing family members and in-laws to jobs for which they are not qualified. It encompasses the investigations for security clearances, which is one of the inconveniences it has posed for Trump.
Also, it's director is not supposed to be "acting," as the current director is. But we have an acting Secretary of Defense, too. "Acting" means Addison mitchell McConnell doesn't have to bestir himself to get the appointee confirmed. And the Senate doesn't get to ask about conflicts of interest. Which most of the actors have.
He is doing a lot of things he can't do. McConnell doesn't care as long as he is approving judicial appointments. And the Donfather has offered some judicial lulus: He's bringing idiots. He is bringing cranks. He is bringing incompetents. And some, I assume, are good people.
So, can he do this? No. But will he get away with it? Who will stop him?
No one will stop him. That is the nature of his "toughness". No one will stop him and although means that he faces no risk for being "tough", he demands (and receives) "credit" for it, because being tough has become a value in itself regardless of what the toughness serves. It's a terrible decline in what was left of our moral vocabulary.
DeleteUp until recently I have been against them bringing articles of impeachment, figuring that the time and energy would be better spent making sure that someone else was elected in 2020. Now I feel that impeachment needs to be on the table, even if there is no possibility that the Senate will ratify it. Trump is slow-motion destroying our government. He has already wrecked the civil service system. Foreign policy? Forget it. All we have left are one-sided relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Impeachment would at least make a statement. Yes, it is political rather than legal. But someone needs to formally address the emperor's nakedness. I know Pelosi is playing a long game, but at some point she needs to recognize that it's time to act.
DeleteI suspect that there is a plan for impeachment. There could be two parts. The first is the slow fleshing out of the Mueller report by Congress. Things are verified and expanded in order to bolster impeachment or Republicans are forced to continue to obstruct justice. In this case, I think they may be trying to make a case strong enough to get Republican Senate defections, since some of the "conservatives" there may actually still be conservative.
DeleteThe second part is to drop impeachment closer to the election to start a firestorm that distracts Trump's camp. This might be risky, because it might also energize his base to "save" him. But the first part I outlined may be an attempt to offset or mute this possibility.
I don't think McConnell objects to approving Trump nominees. But there has been a problem with getting nominees over to McConnell. Part of it is that the Trump Administration's usual sources of candidates for administration posts (Fox News on-air personalities, members of his family, et al) frequently seem to have more baggage than a bellhop at the Waldorf. And part of it is that qualified candidates mysteriously don't want to associate themselves with this administration.
DeleteReally, the Office of Personnel Management is the very last agency the Trumpites should be looking to dismantle. Hiring and retaining good talent is hard enough for them, even with professional assistance.
It is easier to destroy a thing than to fix a thing. I was a government worker for the Department of the Army from 1968 to 2007. Then a contractor from 2007 to 2017. I can only say that the quality of the organizations has dropped over that time. I would ascribe the greater portion of the blame to Robert McNamara and his determination that all actual benchwork be contracted out and that the government workers become only managers. This has led to the present situation where few if any people have bench experience or technical expertise. How well can they then manage highly technical contracts or distinguish promising from unpromising technical paths? But what do I know? I stayed as close to the bench as possible over my whole career. If there was technical evaluation of a technology needed, they came to me. But now I'm a caregiver. Another dinosaur goes extinct. I managed to train a millennial or two before I was done. But they now exist in an environment inimical to the development of technical prowess.
ReplyDeleteI did bench work (chemistry) my whole career, too. Trained a Gen Y guy who took my place when I retired. Trouble is, one's boss is always someone who doesn't have bench experience, at least not in that field. And you are always having to impress on them that we have no magic black box in the lab that tells you everything you want to know.
DeleteI had a fortunate experience. My first supervisor Stan Greenberg ran the crew that developed the first portable digital computer for artillery ballistics, the FADAC. It was a four man carry with a disk memory and was fielded in the Viet Nam War. Stan didn't bend the rules. He broke them. He was even investigated by the FBI and though he didn't play by regulation, they determined there was no personal gain involved. It was only to get the job done. In 1977, when Frankford Arsenal was closed (no golf course), Stan retired and started a company designing and making computer based cash registers that tracked inventory. You probably have seen them at checkout over the decades. He and his partner sold out to Rite Aid in 2000 for $40M. Man, they don't make them like Stan anymore. They make them like what you're talking about, Katherine.
DeleteSomewhat on, somewhat off point: In the run-up to the 60-somethingth campaign rally since he filed for re-election (after the huuugest inauguration in the history of the universe), the Donfather's people announced 120,000 people were coming. That number -- 120,000 -- was repeated over and over from Monday through Wednesday. So imagine my shock today to see this headline:
ReplyDelete"Trump Orlando rally attendance was 19,792, city says"
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-trump-orlando-rally-attendance-20190619-h6qc5bm7tjdfrfp2ktf33fxc4e-story.html
That was the turnstile count. There were empty seats in the upper reaches, but there was a thick crowd on the floor of the arena, which normally holds 19,700 for a center stage concert.
Where were the other 100,208? Not outside watching the big screen, either.
Hustling media is on to something else, though. One of these days I will write about what has happened to my old craft. And it won't be pretty.
But, but Tom! It's all fake news. The President said so.
DeleteThis feels like Trump, who actually has very little in common with the Tea Party, trying to placate Tea Party allies by making a gesture toward one of the latter's pet causes, which is to shrink the size of government.
ReplyDeleteThere are principled reasons to support limits on government. But there is no principle I know of, or at least none that I support, that says, "Hack away at government jobs willy nilly."
Trump is every bit as good at Tea Party zealotry as he is at negotiating with North Korea.
I think you are right that he is trying to placate the Tea Party. I also think that he is trying to check off boxes, of things that were campaign promises. One of the things he campaigned on was "small government", and eliminating bureaucracy. He is never not campaigning. He wants a second term way worse than he wanted the first term, for various reasons.
DeleteI have probably told this story once before, but at the huge national insurance company where I once worked, there was a famous episode not unlike the one related above.
ReplyDeleteInsurance companies employ lots of physicians to review claims and requests for exceptions from coverage rules and things like that. These doctors are very highly paid in order to attract them away from the actual practice of medicine. These doctors are called Medical Directors.
One day, the CEO decided that he had to pee, and standing at the executive urinal (gold plated? I don't know) he found himself next to the executive who ran the Medical Director department for the United States. When men find themselves peeing next to men they know, they often make very casual conversation and in this case, the CEO offhandedly mentioned that Medical Directors were very expensive and he wondered if there might be a way to do a study to see if costs could be reduced. Saying nothing more, he finished, washed his hands at the sink, and left.
The director he spoke to then left, presumably after washing his hands, and by the end of that day had begun to orchestrate a layoff of about a third of all the Medical Directors in the US which amounted to hundreds of jobs. He did this without telling any of the other directors or requesting any permission. It was executed very quickly and completely with no potential impact analysis of any kind.
Skip ahead a month or so. The CEO is making a sort of national inspection tour. He goes to a health plan somewhere where an angry and frustrated Head Medical Director bravely rips him a new one for mandating a mass layoff that had now made the caseloads so high that the Medical Directors were slipping months behind, attracting the ire of members and physicians and getting the attention of regulators and the press. And this was the first the CEO had heard of it.
The idiot who did this (in order to impress the CEO with his "pro-activeness") was not punished and in the executive circles I inhabited at the time it was just considered an amusing anecdote. Hopefully few people died while waiting for some lifesaving treatment that they needed on an exception basis. But this sort of thing is very typical. And despite what people claim that Adam Smith would say, the "market" did not punish the company or anyone in it for this screw-up.