For too long unelected bureaucrats have interfered in virtually every aspect of our lives. They dictate what we can eat, the kind of stove we use, require shower heads that don’t provide enough water, toilets that need to be flushed twice, even the type of car we can drive. Which raises the question, who do we want making government decisions that affect us, our elected representatives or unelected career bureaucrats.
In the election, the American people made clear they resent this stifling bureaucracy, and elected President Trump to change it. He kept his promise on his first day in office by signing an executive order, “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.”
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In the last century, the federal government has expanded its reach, size, and authority so that it has become a fourth branch, without any constitutional basis or congressional approval. Some federal employees see themselves as being entitled to independently make policy decisions, rather than as subordinates obliged to carry out the President’s vision whether they agree or not.
Elections have consequences, and when ‘We the People’ speak, career civil servants should act accordingly. The President is charged with faithful execution of the laws. To do so, he must have appropriate management oversight over the small group of professionals in important policy positions. Trump’s order will reclassify those high-level federal personnel to at-will employees of the elected executive. With this order, President Trump is restoring the structure mandated in the Constitution.
To be clear, there are thousands of excellent people who have devoted their lives to serving the public. However, I have found those devoted public servants are exasperated that many of their coworkers are slackers, and they are frustrated these underperformers aren’t fired.
Agencies removed 0.002% (less than 4,000 of 1.6 million) tenured permanent executive branch employees for performance or misconduct in FY 2022. A survey conducted by the Office of Personnel Management found that only 29% of federal employees believed their agencies were actively working to manage underperforming staff.
Shirkers aren’t the only problem in the federal workforce. A cadre of career employees actively work to undermine the policies of the President. This can take the form of slow walking requests, producing documents that are deficient and must be rewritten, and sometimes simply refusing to implement the administration’s policies. In 2017, Bloomberg News ran a feature titled “Washington bureaucrats are quietly working to undermine Trump’s agenda” that documented how “career staff have found ways to obstruct, slow down or simply ignore their new leader, the president.”
That resistance continues. A recent survey by RMG Research asked federal employees what they would do if Trump gave them a lawful order that they considered to be bad policy. Sixty-four percent of those who voted for Harris said they would ignore the order and do what they thought was best. These obstructionists intend to thwart the will of the duly elected president. This is the real “threat to democracy.”
Critics claim that this will rob us of the expertise of career people. That is laughable considering the number of times the government experts have gotten it wrong. One doesn’t have to dig very deep for examples of the disastrous advice of the experts: telling us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, lying about the origins of COVID and covering up Fauci’s funding of the bioweapons lab in Communist China, Janet Yellin saying rising inflation was only temporary, 51 intelligence officials lying to us and claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, and officials telling us that crime was down, opioid deaths were declining, and immigration was under control.
The American people are tired of experts telling us they know better than we do and getting it wrong. When bureaucrats are wrong, they face no consequences. On the other hand, elected officials must face the voters. Experts should be consulted but they should never be given the power to make the decisions. That’s the job of the elected officials.
Of course, the Democrats are planning to challenge this executive order in court. They have one huge problem: the Supreme Court has ruled that unelected bureaucrats should not decide major questions, and it has held that Congress cannot insulate senior policymaking officials from accountability to the president.
Trump’s executive order will weed out the most unproductive and obstructionist employees, and in doing so will have a greater impact on average Americans then even the budget cuts which will come from the very important Department of Government Efficiency.
As Russ Vought, OMB director put it, “President Trump is delivering on his promise to make Washington accountable again to the citizens it’s meant to serve.”
Pat Nolan founded the Nolan Center for Justice at the CPAC/ACU Foundation and was a member of the California State Assembly from 1978-1994 and Republican Leader from 1984-1988.
