President Donald Trump was inaugurated on Friday, and he has signed a bunch of executive orders. He has pissed off a lot of workers and unions already by instituting a hiring freeze in the federal government.
On Friday, he issued a presidential memo saying:
“… No vacant positions existing at noon on January 22, 2017, may be filled and no new positions may be created, except in limited circumstances.
The head of any executive department or agency may exempt from the hiring freeze any positions that it deems necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities.”
The hiring freeze affects all sectors of the federal government except for those dealing with the military, public health, and public safety. The domestic agencies are going to shrink, and the defense workforce will grow.
Trump may think this will help, but it will hurt a lot of people. It will disrupt many essential services. This will increase spending because the federal agencies will have to hire more expensive contractors. This means that we will have longer lines at the Social Security office, and the agencies that take care of us will be understaffed.
Former Office of Management and Budget official Robert Shea told Politico:
“The government is a place where it is easier to keep something from getting done, than it is to actually do something. All of the work that the new administration wants to get accomplished will depend on the speed and productivity of the federal workforce.”
I guess he thinks that many federal workers are not needed. Trump still doesn’t have his entire cabinet in place, but I guess he wants to look like he knows what he’s doing. Things like this often happen when transferring from one administration to the next, especially when the new president is from a different party.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot
