At any given moment in our current political landscape, there are thousands of actions and photo-ops one could pontificate on. That’s seemingly the point — flood the system while talking heads and leaders feed red meat to their base.
But there was one post by the billionaire-in-chief, Elon Musk, over the weekend that was too revelatory to ignore. In his likely ketamine-fueled flurry of messages on the “free speech” platform he owns, Musk did something a lot of Republicans do when it can be used to make a point about how radical the current left has become.
“What DOGE is doing is similar to Clinton/Gore Dem policies of the 1990s. The current Dem party has just gone so crazy far left that it isn’t recognizable anymore!”
For those unaware of what Musk is referring to, a little context is necessary to really understand why this statement is so revealing.
At the beginning of Bill Clinton’s first term in office, he signed an executive order stating that every government department or agency with more than 100 employees needed to cut 4% of their civilian positions through “early out programs”. If that sounds similar, wait a beat because I assure you that the similarities end there.
Clinton then worked with Congress to pass the Federal Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994, which passed by huge bipartisan margins (391-17 in the House and 99-1 in the Senate). This legislation authorized the spending required for the buyouts and specified which agencies would be immune from the reduction. Ultimately, more than 270,000 federal employees received these buyouts.
“After all the rhetoric about cutting the size and cost of government, our administration has done the hard work and made the tough choices,” Clinton said. “I believe the economy will be stronger, and the lives of middle-class people will be better, ass we drive down the deficit with legislation like this.”
One more important item to note before moving forward is that the initiative itself was guided by a National Performance Review, which involved Al Gore and more than 200 civil servants working to make government cost less and work more efficiently.
Savvy readers will already pick up the big difference between what Clinton did and what Musk and his cronies are doing. Let’s just start with the fact that the word “similar” in Musk’s post is doing a ton of heavy lifting.
It is, in fact, not even remotely similar. Musk and his team of 20-somethings instead sent a mass email to 2 million of the 2.4 million federal employees throughout the country letting them know they are facing a “fork in the road”. Although they will receive a generous buyout offer, the email suggests that if enough folks don’t take the deal, layoffs are on the horizon.
No diving into the bones of the federal government and working with experts who know where the fat truly lies. No working with Congress to pass legislation authorizing spending on the buyouts and clarifying what departments will be exempt.
None of the hard work required to make tough decisions in the hopes that the government might eventually work better for the people it serves.
The results of this “efficiency” speedrun have been nothing short of catastrophic. Nearly 7% of the federal workforce took Musk’s offer, which seemingly triggered the layoff phase of the program. Thousands of employees at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Federal Aviation Administration were laid off.
In a potentially disastrous move, DOGE accidentally fired 350 people from the National Nuclear Security Administration — yes, that’s the agency that handles all things nuclear, including our submarines, and is a vital asset to maintaining our safety. Although the move was quickly corrected, with only 50 people being fired, this blunder does so much to showcase just how clearly out of his element Musk is, and how potentially dangerous what he’s doing could be.
Every single day the talking points about “fraud, waste, and abuse” are sent down from Musk and Trump so the talking heads can deliver them to the awaiting masses like a ribeye steak. Every single day we’re told that those protesting DOGE must be getting kickbacks and in on the scheme. Every single day we’re told that this is just Trump keeping his promises to the American people.
And maybe it is. Maybe a large chunk of the country did vote to let two men determine the fate of the nation without any oversight or collaboration. Maybe they’re fine with the potential real-world consequences of these decisions. Maybe they’re ok with their neighbor getting laid off, or potentially thousands of folks in other countries dying.
I’d like to think that’s not the case. I’d like to think that people are inherently good and want what’s best for their communities and their nation.
It’s harder and harder to believe that though.
As always, here’s a quote from someone smarter than me to cap things off:
“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country