If we ignore the “less-costly” part, because none of this has anything to do with saving taxpayer money, we see a plan to literally undo the federal government as a centralized entity. Moving an office doesn’t necessarily undo its purpose or function, of course, and obviously plenty of agencies have physical locations all over the country, but it removes “Washington” as a consolidated force, the metonymic understanding that the government has a home and is functioning from there.
The memo, penned by both OMB’s Russell Vought and OPM’s Charles Ezell, has Vought’s and Project 2025’s destructive fingerprints all over it. It is ostensibly in response to Trump’s February 11 executive order on implementing DOGE’s “workforce optimization initiative.” It provides guidance to federal agencies on how to conduct massive “reductions in force,” or RIFs, and it wastes no time in once again deeply insulting the 2.3 million federal workers that haven’t yet been fired:
“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” the memo begins. “At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public. Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hardworking American citizens.”
It goes on to outline the requirements of Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans (ARRPs), the first phase of which are due by March 13. Those plans will need to have “A significant reduction in the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions by eliminating positions that are not required” — meaning tens or hundreds of thousands of people get fired, and the agencies they work at get substantively worse at the things they do, and probably stop doing many of those things entirely.
The memo offers a variety of “tools” to guide the overall RIF: continue the hiring freeze implemented government-wide on Trump’s inauguration day, obviously; removing “underperforming employees or employees engaged in misconduct,” which sounds reasonable until you remember that the firing notices that went out to probationary employees hired within the past one or two years claimed they were performing poorly even when excellent reviews of their work were in evidence; and, very darkly and probably illegally, “renegotiating provisions of collective bargaining agreements that would inhibit enhanced government efficiency and employee accountability.”
Speaking of collective bargaining, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest fed union, took aim at the call for massive RIFs in a release on Wednesday: “Laying off potentially hundreds of thousands of federal workers will mean fewer services at higher costs for the American taxpayer,” said Everett Kelley. “Longer waits at VA hospitals, fewer inspectors ensuring the safety of our meats and produce, less research into cures for debilitating and deadly diseases, more risks for air travelers, longer waits for Social Security enrollment and passports, and the list goes on.”
The OMB/OPM memo doesn’t stop at that first ARRP due in March — that’s just “phase 1.” After that, we get to that part V: “Phase 2 ARRPs,” in which a second plan must be submitted by April 14. This is where we get a “proposed future-state organizational chart” with “consolidated management hierarchy,” which parts of the agency might be targeted for “subsequent large-scale RIFs,” and more, including the call for potential relocation ideas. Phase 2 is expected to be fully implemented by the end of September.
There are exceptions noted in the memo, including the Postal Service, military personnel, immigration and law enforcement positions deemed necessary, and, of course, the Executive Office of the President. But that leaves everyone else from wildland firefighters to IRS fraud investigators on the chopping block. And if agencies really do start talking about relocation, it means even more turnover, a rooting out of DC-based civil servants who can’t or won’t leave their homes in order to follow the EPA’s main headquarters to Des Moines or Kansas City. What’s left would be a husk of a government, drained of talent and dedication, spread out around a diminished, hollowed-out country, as the people it was built to serve suffer around it.
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