Trump administration hoping to reshape the federal government during shutdown
President Donald Trump said he planned to meet with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, to discuss cutting federal agencies amid a government shutdown. Cutting down the federal workforce has remained a goal of this administration.
Cutting agencies
Before the shutdown began, several federal agencies were told in a memo from OMB to prepare for “Reduction in Force (RIF) notices.”
The president said he planned to meet with OMB director Russ Vought about cutting entire agencies.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday.
Agencies that might be on the chopping block include the Department of Education, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, or NOAA and more.
“Every one of these programs was popular enough with the American people that it was voted on by majorities of the House and the Senate and signed by the president,” David Lewis, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, said to Straight Arrow News.
Typically, cutting federal agencies would require Congress.
“I wouldn’t say that they lost the power of the purse,” Preston Brashers, research fellow for tax policy at the Heritage Foundation, told Straight Arrow News. “I’d say that they’ve temporarily given it up during this shutdown.”
But with the shutdown, Trump can work with Vought to determine which government activities should stop and which remain essential.
“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump wrote. “They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Restructuring the government
Cutting the federal workforce has been a goal of this administration since the president took office for the second time.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, let go of tens-of-thousands of federal workers.
“There’s an efficiency rationale that they lean pretty hard on — that basically, they think the government is overstaffed to do the work that is legally required to do,” Philip Wallach, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Straight Arrow News.
Wallach added there could be another reason to reduce the workforce.
“I think their deeper motivation is also pretty plain that they think a lot of the folks who work for the federal government are hostile to President Trump’s agenda,” Wallach said. “It’s more likely that they can realize their agenda without those people than with them.”
Lewis agreed.
“I think it’s also true that the President has a long-standing grievance against government employees and believes that they’re part of the deep state,” he said. “And so efforts to sort of fire people in a mass way, and then, if rebuilding is necessary, rebuilding with people that they hire, I think, also meets the president’s goals.”
Cutting federal workers isn’t a new notion. Former President Bill Clinton heavily reduced the workforce in his eight years in office on his way to balancing the budget.
“Large parts of the Trump coalition just don’t like government at all and want to see some of these functions essentially stamped out or made ineffective, because they just believe that they’re bad for the American people,” Wallach said. “That’s not so common with the Clinton administration.”
The Clinton administration mostly did that through hiring freezes, early retirement incentives and more.
“In the 1990s, we were coming in close to a balanced budget,” Brashers said. “And right now we’re looking at — we have a $37.5 trillion national debt. So, the idea that we can kind of continue on this path without any sort of adjusting of our fiscal trajectory is actually not really right.”
While the budget is a concern of Brashers, the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration, the GOP-led budget bill earlier this year will add several trillion to that deficit over the next decade.
Project 2025
Cutting the federal workforce was a prominent part of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for shaping the federal government.
Trump repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign but called it out by name in his latest social post.
A Project 2025 tracker shows the administration has completed 48% of Project 2025 objectives in just six months.
“Russ Vought has a long leash, and I think it’s because the president believes that Vought has tremendous skill and that he is generally supportive of what Vought is doing in terms of budget cutting,” Lewis said. “Vought is a very sophisticated, clear thinking, ideological person, and has wanted to cut the administrative state for some time, and the president wants to do that, but once those cuts start to bind, then the leash that Vought has been given will be pulled closer in.”
Project 2025 wants to dismantle several agencies and terminate up to one million federal workers.
“I think you’re just going to have a very different perspective — if you’re in the EPA or the National Science Foundation, the Department of Labor, Department of Education, — [it’s] going to be a lot different than if you’re in Department of Homeland Security, if you’re in Department of Justice,” Brashers said. “The situation is not going to be the same for workers in each of these different situations.”
Citizen concerns
So, what should the American public make of all this?
If you’re a federal worker, Wallach said your concern is obvious.
“It’s definitely extremely damaging for government worker morale,” Wallach said. “I think that’s part of the point, right? I think the government, I think the administration, would like to see attrition from people who feel that this is not going to be a comfortable place to work for the next coming years.”
There’s also concern over the way the government wants to reduce federal spending. Critics pointed out cutting government agencies while continuing to ship money overseas to Israel and Argentina is not a good look.
“I think there’s a lot of room for criticism about ways that we’re spending money, that we shouldn’t be spending money,” Brashers said. “And I won’t say that it’s one, you know, certainly not one party that has made mistakes over the years.”
Perhaps the biggest concern from the American people, Wallach said, is how this is all going down.
“It becomes much more of an all-top down, president-centered thing,” Wallach said. “I think we already have a system that’s much too heavily weighted toward the presidency. So, for Congress to give up that power to allocate spending, I see as dangerous for our politics.”
Some of what’s being cut is also of concern, especially when it comes to science. Cuts have already come to major scientific agencies and research and more could come.
“I think being a world leader in science is one of the strengths of this country,” Wallach said. “So, to the extent that the administration’s cuts are putting that in jeopardy, yeah, I think people should be substantively concerned about that.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
