Memo to Trump, Re: Reforming The “Civil Service”

Here’s a puzzler for you: the number of civilian federal employees is actually smaller than it was when John F. Kennedy was president. This anomaly is explained by one of the smarter liberals around, John DiIulio, in his provocative book Bring Back the Bureaucrats. I say let’s not do that, but DiIulio does reveal that since government is vastly bigger than it was when Kennedy was president, there must be some funny business going on. And indeed there is: government has outsourced bureaucracy to private contractors. It’s a way of paying what are essentially federal workers a lot more than if they were officially civil servants.

Once again, Yes, Prime Minister exposes some of tricks of this racket in this clip, where former cabinet secretary “Sir Arnold Robinson” explains to Sir Humphrey how to disguise pay raises:

If Trump really wants to drain the swamp, he’ll propose sweeping civil service reform to allow firing bureaucrats an masse, and pulling the plug on outsourcing bureaucracy. Maybe an agenda for the second term.

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