Quick Hit: Trump's "Buy Out" Plan
"Much about the plan remained unclear, including whether the administration can legally offer such a sweeping buyout package without budget authorization from Congress." Do You See a Pattern?
Earlier this week amidst much fanfare, the President announced he was going to offer federal employees an option to resign, which was quickly called a “Buy Out” plan. The idea behind this, like the idea to force remote workers to return to the office, was to reduce the number of federal employees without having to fire them, thereby sidestepping some of the sticky “just cause” issues embedded in civil service.
Like the plan to re-open Guantanamo or the plan to withhold federal funds from States and local government, this one had a few problems. A noted above, “Much about the plan remained unclear, including whether the administration can legally offer such a sweeping buyout package without budget authorization from Congress”… and absent that budget authorization, which is hardly a sure thing given Trump’s expectation that cuts be made so he can reward his billionaire donors with a continuation of the tax cuts he enacted in his first administration, why would anyone take this deal?
And the anodyne phrase “Much about the plan remained unclear,” masks the fact that there was no thought given to what would happen if, say, all the janitors at the Pentagon took the offer… or all the payroll personnel took the offer… you get the idea.
At some juncture one would think that elected representatives and Senators would see that Trump’s power grabs are undercutting their authority and power… and that reality might be far more persuasive than an argument that it “erodes democracy” or even the argument that it is illegal because it violates the constitution.
Who is going to point out that when “much about a plan is unclear” that some serious questions need to be posed… and MAYBE when those questions are posed and the only people who know the answers are those federal employees who took buyouts it might dawn on voters that having a workforce independent of politics is worthwhile.