{"id":2716,"date":"2024-11-20T21:47:41","date_gmt":"2024-11-20T21:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/musk-ramaswamy-publish-plan-to-slash-workforce\/"},"modified":"2024-11-20T21:47:41","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T21:47:41","slug":"musk-ramaswamy-publish-plan-to-slash-workforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/musk-ramaswamy-publish-plan-to-slash-workforce\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk, Ramaswamy publish plan to slash workforce"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Civil service protections can\u2019t stop large-scale firings of federal workers, the leaders of President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s effort to downsize the government wrote Wednesday in an op-ed.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-leaders of Trump\u2019s planned effort to cut federal rules and workers, authored a\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/i>op-ed<\/a> offering the most comprehensive plan sketched out so far for the new Trump endeavor.<\/p>\n

They plan to serve as \u201coutside volunteers\u201d and will work with the Trump transition team to \u201cidentify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders,\u201d they wrote. The new team will work \u201cin the new administration\u201d closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget, the authors wrote.<\/p>\n

Musk and Ramaswamy said they\u2019ll advise the effort, which they\u2019ve dubbed the \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency,\u201d to pursue three major types of reforms: regulatory cuts, administrative reductions and cost-savings.<\/p>\n

The team will work with legal experts inside government agencies and \u201caided by advanced technology\u201d to identify rules that exceed the authority Congress granted agencies. Their team will then present their list of rules to Trump, \u201cwho can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

\u2018Mass head-count reductions\u2019 <\/span>
A big reduction in regulations \u201cprovides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,\u201d Musk and Ramaswamy wrote. Their operation intends to identify \u201cthe minimum number of employees required at an agency\u201d for it to perform its legal and constitutional duties.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

Employees whose jobs are cut \u201cdeserve to be treated with respect,\u201d Musk and Ramaswamy wrote, and their goal would be to help support their \u201ctransition into the private sector.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump can use existing laws \u201cto give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

The Trump advisers said that despite conventional wisdom, civil service protections can\u2019t stop Trump or his appointees from firing federal workers, as long as the firings are \u201creductions in force\u201d that don\u2019t target specific workers.<\/p>\n

Ramaswamy suggested recently<\/a> that it would be possible to randomly fire workers based on their Social Security numbers. On Trump\u2019s first day in office, he could fire workers whose numbers end in an even digit, Ramaswamy said, adding that the idea was a \u201cthought experiment,\u201d but would avoid lawsuits alleging discrimination.<\/p>\n

As president, Trump would have the authority to implement rules \u201cthat would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area,\u201d Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.<\/p>\n

They said they would welcome \u201ca wave of voluntary terminations\u201d of federal employees who don\u2019t want to work from the office five days a week. \u201cIf federal employees don\u2019t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn\u2019t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

Critics are assailing Trump\u2019s plan to shred the federal government and target federal workers. But Musk and Ramaswamy say they welcome the fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Civil service protections can\u2019t stop large-scale firings of federal workers, the leaders of President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s effort to downsize the government wrote Wednesday in an op-ed. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-leaders of Trump\u2019s planned effort to cut federal rules and workers, authored a\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0op-ed offering the most comprehensive plan sketched out so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}