gotchanewsdaily.com 
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
CNN
—
The lack of a defined, public and overarching plan for President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort to drastically shrink the federal workforce has meant that information has seeped out here and there.
It’s not clear if there is a set of goals the administration is trying to reach other than simply to cut government.
To connect the dots of what’s happening, I reached out to Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan and nonprofit group that advocates for good government.
It would be one thing, he told me, if workers were being cut intentionally, but it seems indiscriminate and arbitrary.
Instead of “Ready, aim, fire,” he said, it’s “fire, fire fire.”
That should concern Americans, he argued, since the government belongs to everyone.
“What we’re watching right now is arson of a public asset, which is our federal government,” Stier said.
Excerpts of our full conversation, conducted by phone, are below.
Missing the forest for the trees
WOLF: First, please just help Americans see the see the forest on DOGE and all of these changes we’re reading about.
STIER: I think the most important way of thinking about this is really fundamentally about the purpose of our government. Is it there to look out for the public good or the private interests of the office holder of the day.
That, to me, is what should be the overall narrative for people.
We had a system 140 years plus ago called the spoils system. It was the system of to the victor goes the spoils. Whoever was president got to put in place loyalists and partisans in federal jobs, and it resulted in corruption and incompetence, and ultimately in the assassination of President (James) Garfield in 1881 by a disgruntled job seeker.
That led to the system we have today of non-political, merit-based civil service, and the basic proposition that presidents were there to serve the public’s will and to follow the rule of law.
What we’re seeing right now is the deconstruction of that system that has served us well for 140 years – not perfectly, but well.
There are certainly lots of things that we can do better in government. Our government needs to be modernized. But what we’re seeing now, in terms of the return to the spoils system, is going in the exactly wrong direction.
But Trump is also talking about a return to a merit system
WOLF: There’s an irony here since Trump, in his address to a joint session of Congress, was talking about how he is returning to a merit system by doing away with diversity programs, some of which have been in place since the 1960s. How do you refute his argument that this purging of the workforce is actually a return to the to the merit system?
STIER: It’s important not to confuse different elements of what’s going on here. There is this variety of excuses being offered as to the changes that are taking place, and one of those is this notion of getting rid of DEI. Whatever the merits are of that – and I don’t even think we need to get into that – things that are happening to our government now are, at best, infinitesimally, tangentially related to DEI.
The firings of what are called probationary workers, who are basically the new workers in the federal government, are arbitrary with no cohesive plan, with no focus on poor performers, no focus on job occupations, that has nothing to do with DEI. The firing of Inspectors General, the people who are tasked with getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse in our government, across the government, that has nothing to do with DEI. The firing of the head of the Office of Special Counsel, that has nothing to do with DEI. That’s somebody who’s supposed to make sure that whistleblowers who are finding waste, fraud and abuse have a place to go.
The things that he has done in all these areas are about making the government more pliant to his wishes.
The public will pay a price for what’s already happened
WOLF: You talked about the Office of Special Counsel. The head of that office is fighting for his job in court. He’s also brought to the Merit Systems Protection Board the firing of 5,000 USDA workers. Is there an opportunity for the system, essentially, to work despite Trump’s efforts, or have we already seen irreparable harm to the bureaucracy?
STIER: It’s not over yet. There’s certainly opportunities to redress the problems that have been created. Honestly, the plans that have been described so far would take us even further down this road. The plans we’re seeing are the firing of 90,000 VA workers and other parts of the government. The courts have stepped in to stop some of the things that are clearly illegal, and they can make things better, but they don’t fix them. When people are fired illegally and they’re given their job back, at least temporarily, they’ve still been fired.
(CNN has reported on a plan to cut more than 70,000 workers at VA.)
‘Worse than amateur hour’
WOLF: These larger plans are coming out to us in drips and drabs. Why is it a problem that we don’t know what Trump’s ultimate plan for the government is?
STIER: There does not appear to be a strategy. What we’re seeing right now is not ready, aim, fire; but fire, fire, fire.
There does not appear to be justification for the cuts that have been made. There’s no appropriate preparation, and it’s being done in a way that is most hurtful to the people involved.
It is worse than amateur hour.
We’re hearing drips and drabs of plans to fire people or to make cuts but no justification for why those cuts, why those people being fired, and no evidence that it’s been either thoughtfully constructed or thoughtfully done. In fact, it’s the reverse.
“Arson of a public asset”
WOLF: This is not being done with transparency, so what should Americans assume is the end game of the White House here?
STIER: When you’re dealing with public assets, there’s a responsibility, there’s an obligation for those in power to be transparent. And this, in itself, is a major violation of their responsibility as public leaders.
Congress has been absent. Congress should be demanding the exact information that we’re talking about right now. It should be asking for the strategy, the plans, the justification, and they deserve it as much as the larger public does.
This is important, because these are public assets. What we’re watching right now is arson of a public asset, which is our federal government. There should be a pretty high bar to justify that.
There’s some rationalization that this is about saving money, when in fact, the costs are clearly going to be far larger than anything that’s actually saved, and even their statement of savings is demonstrably proven wrong.
There’s a cost to cutting
WOLF: Why is the cost of this effort going to be more than the savings?
STIER: Fundamentally look at the firings themselves. They’re firing people illegally, who are now having to be rehired. The human cost is enormous. You’ve got thousands of people who are fired that have to protect their rights and get rehired, at least temporarily. The people who are defending the illegal actions of President Trump’s personnel are our civil servants, and where there’s liability, back pay, etc. it’s going to be the American taxpayer that pays them.
The probationary folks, the new employees that are getting fired are the newest in to the federal government. They cost north of $5,000 a person to recruit, to hire and to train these new employees. That’s all wasted money for no strategic reason, no analysis. What we’re seeing is a little bit similar to someone saying, I saved money because I stopped paying my electric bill. Are you going to sit in the dark, or are you actually doing something that makes the whole system better?
No precedent for Elon Musk in government
WOLF: What is your view of Elon Musk and DOGE’s involvement in this?
STIER: It comes back to transparency point. We’ve never had anything remotely like this before, where you have a private individual with enormous financial interest in the decision making of the government, making large across-the-board decisions in the government with no protections against ensuring that the use of public authorities is for the public good rather than his private input.
Our government is a public asset and the use of government authority should only be for public interest. Understanding that he’s pulling the strings when he has no business doing so, given his business, given the fact that he himself has not been confirmed by the Senate, or even really a full time federal employee.
The Supreme Court has ruled on this. There is historical precedent going back to the 1930s that justifies the existence of these independent agencies, that is the law today. Can this Supreme Court overturn it? They could, but it’s the law of the day today.
The normal way we would proceed in these circumstances would be to assume these things are constitutional until the Supreme Court changed the law. But that is not where we are right now.
The Framers wouldn’t have imagined many of the complexities we have in this world that that justified the creation of these entities. You look at something like the Federal Reserve, which is one of the independent entities. Pretty much all economists would say that the independence that exists for the Federal Reserve is really very good for our well-being as a country and for our economy.
This is another example where this president is trying to become the king and is trying to seize power across the board. His motivations have to be questioned when it’s not just those independent agencies he’s going after, but he’s going after folks like the inspector generals and the head of the Office of Special Counsel. There is no there’s no justification for doing that that is aligned with the well-being of the American people. It is just bad for them, because what you’re losing are the people who are actually there responsible for getting at waste, fraud and abuse.
