President Donald Trump’s administration is aggressively attempting to reduce the size of the federal workforce and is close to breaking a record set during former President Bill Clinton’s administration.
During his tenure, Clinton lowered the size of the federal workforce from 2.2 million to 1.8 million. His cuts set the record for federal job elimination since the end of World War II, Just the News reported.
“Civilian workforce figures exclude military personnel and United States Postal Service (USPS) and most totals refer to executive branch employees, who make up the lion’s share of the federal payroll. Those employees are also the administration’s top priority for cuts as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk works to axe trillions in spending from the budget,” the outlet said.
“Early in this second Trump administration, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) coordinated a large-scale federal buyout, offering employees the option of resigning to secure pay through Sept. 30,” it added.
Federal buyouts were the same strategy used by Clinton for many of the job cuts during his two terms.
The Trump administration said that around 3 percent of the massive 2.3 million strong federal workforce took the offer, which was short of the 5 – 10 percent they were seeking. But the administration is planning another round of buyouts and is confident that more employees will take them this time after watching as federal workers continue to be fired.
The cuts are also coming to the Defense Department. “My intent is to maximize participation so that we can minimize the number of involuntary actions that may be required to achieve the strategic objectives,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said regarding buyouts.
Clinton’s record is between 377,000 and 426,200 cuts, and Trump would need to eliminate around 200,000 federal jobs in order to set the record.
In February, Fox News anchor Kayleigh McEnany pointed to a 2017 Washington Post article about bureaucratic resistance to Trump during his first term after Marie Harf, a former official in the Obama administration, complained about the firing of government workers.
Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by renaming the United States Digital Service in an executive order on January 20. He also gave the commission more duties, including the elimination of federal jobs.
During the “Outnumbered” discussion, McEnany brought up reports that some federal government workers were trying to stay “out of spite” so they could wait for Trump’s term to end.
“I do think that federal employees fall into three buckets. You have the political appointees, some of whom are thrilled that this is happening; they see this as a revolution in government. Then you have this other pot of hardworking federal government employees. I think they don’t care who the president is. I think they care deeply about their job and that pot does exist, but that is not all federal workers,” McEnany said.
“There are federal workers that have this attitude, this was an NBC anonymous communication that came to them, I saw this a few weeks ago, a federal employee at the Department of Veterans affairs, ‘A lot of us are going to stay out of spite,’ they said. ‘We’re here for however long we want to be here. I could be here until retirement in 30 years, the Trump Administration is only here for four.’ What’s wrong with trying to root out and employees staying out of spite?” McEnany continued.
Harf replied that the firings were not legal and went on to criticize DOGE for “attacks on public servants” for almost two minutes after a federal judge allowed layoffs at the US Agency for International Development to stand, even though two unions that represent agency workers had sued.
“DOGE isn’t managing these people and at the same time, people across the country can’t pay their mortgages or put food on the table for their kids because they got fired from a job they thought had job security. That is not electorally or morally a good plan, I think, for Republicans,” Harf said.
After some back-and-forth, McEnany brought up the Post article about Trump’s first-term bureaucrats who fought against his policies.
“It’s easy to oversimplify and point to some stories of individuals who got termination notices, but the background is this: This is not a Republican newspaper, conservative newspaper, this is ‘the Washington Post’… years ago: ‘Resistance From Within The Federal Government,’” McEnany said.