Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Enjoy being on hold indefinitely with any government agency, waiting in longer lines, and emails going unanswered.
This sounds like a dream, as it proves again these things don't need to exist.
Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
111–120 of 182 posts
Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first point requires an additional layer. The modern administrative state has its origins in Woodrow Wilson ideology of scientific governance. Wilson didn’t like democracy and wasn’t much of a fan of the constitution: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-ad... . A consequence of centralizing governance in a giant federal bureaucracy is that it’s become dominated by one party: https://www.gove…
It's also important to highlight the origins of modern US civil service (read: the Wilson+ era you're referencing) in the anti-Conkling/spoils Congressional factions and presidents of the late 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Breeds_(politics)#Setback... As recently as 1880s the US was still assigning important civil service roles to whomever donated the most money to election campaigns. The 1880s - 1…
There is expertise, but there is also ideology. To use the plane analogy everyone likes: the pilot should use his expertise to fly the plane, but he doesn’t get to choose where the plane is going! When you “insulate” the civil service from politics, what you end up doing is privileging the ideology and political goals of civil servants over those of voters.
Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the intention of this administration. Destroy any service that the government could provide until people can genuinely think the government is useless. Then the people currently in power and their cronies will come out of the woodwork "saving" the country with their private companies and interests. Competing with an empty shell of a government is the easiest way. As a side effect, if they're to lose the next e…
There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is. The federal bureaucracy is completely dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe... . No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors.…
The military is similarly dominated by the other party. Somehow, we expect them to be professional. Professionalism here means to faithfully execute lawful orders even when a Democrat is in the white house. There were no personal loyalty tests for the military under Obama, or loyalty purges.
That went fine (in that the military did in fact follow lawful orders under Democratic presidents, not in that those orders were necessarily good). It also went fine for the civil service under Republican presidents other than Trump. There are a number of explanations for the difference in perceived (and possibly real) professionalism, which I will not try to speculate on here - but this is not a partisanship problem. It seems to be something specific to Trump-as-President.
Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
#114It’s a terrifying experiment in hollowing out the civil service. At some point a critical mass of Federal workers may be lost which brings the entire machinery of the Federal Government to a standstill. It’s also not clear how to recover from something like this.
I'm not terrified. Just to put some perspective on this, per Pew [1], the federal workforce excluding the postal service (which has actually shrunk as a semi-private employer) has grown by about 1% per year since 2000. As of 2024, it was at 2.4M people. The federal workforce is dramatically bigger than it was even a few years ago [2]. Moreover, the vast majority of federal workers don't have anything to do with the k…
If you zoom out (https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-f...), the size of the federal workforce has been at around 2.7-3 million people since the late 1960s, while the US population has gone from ~198 million in 1967 to ~343 million in 2025. We've gone from 14.39 federal employees per 1,000 people in 1967 to 8.78 federal employees per 1,000 people in 2024. Given that many of these employees do things like maintain infrastructure, regulate goods and services, and provide healthcare, you would expect the federal workforce to scale with the population.
> The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.
Most of the budget increase (~80-85% depending on whose projections you look at) comes from entitlements (social security, medicare/medicaid) and interest payments on the federal debt rather than any new spending. Of course interest payments are caused by past irresponsible spending, but it's hard to avoid debt if whenever the "party of fiscal responsibility" is in power, it does loud and flashy budget cuts that don't meaningfully reduce federal spending, followed by massive tax cuts to juice the economy. This is basically the equivalent of quitting your job and buying a ton of stuff on a credit card because you won $1000 on a scratch-off.
Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
#115Can someone explain the DRP to me? I don’t understand why people got paid to take 8 months of leave if they resigned?
At the start of the year, the OPM announced that federal workers could either take a voluntary resignation and go on paid leave until Sept. 30 (today), or be subject to return-to-office orders (including forced relocation if necessary), higher performance standards, and further involuntary layoffs. According to this article, about 100,000 people took the voluntary resignation. As for motive, it's a way for the Trump…
Thank you!
Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the intention of this administration. Destroy any service that the government could provide until people can genuinely think the government is useless. Then the people currently in power and their cronies will come out of the woodwork "saving" the country with their private companies and interests. Competing with an empty shell of a government is the easiest way. As a side effect, if they're to lose the next e…
There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is. The federal bureaucracy is completely dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe... . No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors.…
You are spamming the same comment all over this thread. And this is just the RW hypocrisy at full display.
Trump is apparently the strong man leader with lots of support but at the same time the weakest leader who can be obstructed by smallest of opposition.
If he cannot get his most ardent detractors to support him then he is not much of a leader.
The sheer amount of complaining is grating and not even backed up with facts. It seemed you ran with the first article you found on Google and didn't read the conclusion:
> in a July poll by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Clinton, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump.
That is maybe Democract are driven more to contribute but in voting there is just 5% difference. So much for "dominated by one party".
Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first point requires an additional layer. The modern administrative state has its origins in Woodrow Wilson ideology of scientific governance. Wilson didn’t like democracy and wasn’t much of a fan of the constitution: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-ad... . A consequence of centralizing governance in a giant federal bureaucracy is that it’s become dominated by one party: https://www.gove…
> then it’s completely unsurprising it will become dominated by the party that prefers bigger government. I think you've assumed the conclusion here. One could equally say that if one party becomes overrepresented by people with higher education, that party will become overrepresented in any administrative position. > Aaron Burr I find myself more and more often in the position of having to look back many decades for…
> I think you've assumed the conclusion here. One could equally say that if one party becomes overrepresented by people with higher education, that party will become overrepresented in any administrative position
I think that’s true! It’s another reason why the federal workforce has come to be dominated by one party. But both point to the same result.
> I don't think many people will look at Comey's prosecution and see it as the clear-headed and honest pursuit of justice
It’s not. It’s tit-for-tat: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-..., https://www.npr.org/2025/08/21/g-s1-84246/civil-fraud-penalt....
I think it’s terrible to go fishing for a technical crimes with the goal of prosecuting a particular person. The criminal laws are written broadly and cannot withstand prosecutors who fit legal pieces together like a puzzle to come up with a legal theory for a prosecution (https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/charting-the-legal-theo...).
Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
#118Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is. The federal bureaucracy is completely dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe... . No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors.…
Did you actually look at the numbers? You should give it a try. The best you can get from those numbers is that people are more likely to donate to the Democratic party than the Republican one. For example: true, 99.4% of the donations from the USDA employees went to the Democratic part. 99.4% of how many donations? Less than 3,000. - Source [0] - and that's an overestimate, since that filter will include donations f…
Why wouldn’t donations be a reasonable proxy? 3,000 samples is more than enough to have a statistically significant analysis of a population of 100,000.
Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the intention of this administration. Destroy any service that the government could provide until people can genuinely think the government is useless. Then the people currently in power and their cronies will come out of the woodwork "saving" the country with their private companies and interests. Competing with an empty shell of a government is the easiest way. As a side effect, if they're to lose the next e…
There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is. The federal bureaucracy is completely dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe... . No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors.…
The federal bureaucracy is only "completely dominated" by one party, because the other party embraced a several-decades-long marketing campaign about how the de jure government is inefficient, hostile, and needs to be destroyed. It's utterly disingenuous to cast this in some relativist context, when this makeup is a direct result of the Republican party's chosen actions.
And I'm saying this as a libertarian who shares most of those frustrations with entrenched bureaucracy - just one who has become extremely conservative now that open fascism is upon us.