George W. Bush, a failed
businessperson from Texas, swept into the White House on January 20, 2001, with
grandiose plans. Dubya’s prowess as a businessperson was exemplified by Arbusto
Oil (Arbusto is Spanish for “bush”). Centered in the middle of the “oil patch”
near Midland, Texas, Bush’s drilling company was unable to find oil! I have
been to Midland, Texas, several times, and the countryside surrounding it is
smothered with active oil wells. Yet, Dubya couldn’t find oil where everyone
else could. Eventually propped up by Saudi oil money (thanks to Daddy Bush’s
connections) Dubya moved on from his failed business ventures and became
Governor of Texas. Then, after a contentious Federal election in November 2000,
Dubya was anointed President by the same Supreme Court that Daddy Bush had
stacked with Republican loyalists.
Bolstered by his experience as a failed oil tycoon, Dubya set out to reform the United States government from top to bottom. A primary goal was to reduce the size of the Federal workforce despite the size of the workforce showing regular declines since the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950s. That fact didn’t stop old Dubya and he eventually released the “President’s Management Agenda” designed to be the end all and be all of rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal government.
Not long after the Agenda was written and approved, Dubya sent out word to all Departments, Agencies, and Bureaus, that they were each supposed to evaluate every civilian employee in their stead to determine if that position was essential to the operation of the government. If it was not, then that position and the person residing in it was to be eliminated.
With great gusto, Dubya loyalists began evaluating everyone to determine if we were essential including my position with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and 6,000 + of my colleagues. The same was true for the 30,000+ employees of the entire Department of the Interior. Task Force’s were developed in each bureau and in the Department, and they were charged with determining who should stay and which positions could be eliminated and instead the duties be performed by someone in the private sector. The bottom line of all this effort was to save the government, and ultimately the taxpayers, money.
After more than a year of investigation and analysis, while each of us fretted daily about your ultimate fate, the results were released.
The US Department of the Interior had spent more than $24 MILLION dollars to evaluate the usefulness and necessity of each of its more than 30,000 employees. The analysis revealed that among the Department’s employees, ranging in location from Guam to the US Virgin Islands, only ONE position, a GS-7 Clerk/Typist in the Main Interior building in downtown Washington DC was deemed unessential. That person, earning slightly more than $20,000 a year, was let go. Dubya certainly saved money in the Department of the Interior with his Management Agenda!
Not surprisingly, a year after the President’s Management Agenda evaluation was completed, the size of the Federal workforce increased by about 200,000 employees.
Which brings us to the current debacle/clusterfuck known as Project 2025 written by multiple members of the Heritage Foundation, and DOGE or the Department of Government Efficiency tasked with implementing much of it. DOGE was promoted by 34-time convicted felon Donald tRump as an avenue for rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal government. To head up this effort he selected Ketamine-addicted Elmo Muck who, just by coincidence, had provided more than $250,000,000 to tRump’s 2024 Presidential campaign. While on the campaign trail, both tRump and Muck claimed that DOGE (an agency not sanctioned by the Congress) would eliminate at least $2 TRILLION dollars from the Federal budget providing outstanding relief to the beleaguered taxpayer.
However, not long after the King was inaugurated, Muck and his DOGE minions, including one person known as “Big Balls” announced that the savings wouldn’t be so great. Now, after the King’s anointment, DOGE would only save $1 TRILLION dollars.
Muck, standing on the stage at some radical Republican gathering with a chain saw in his hand, whipped the assembled tRump cult members into a fury as he talked about taking a chain saw to the Federal government and the Federal budget.
Muck certainly took a chain saw to the Federal workforce but now by his own admission, will be “saving” the taxpayers only $150 BILLION and that assumes his math is correct which, so far, has proven to be a mercurial concept.
Through deferred retirement programs and the elimination of probationary employees, my old agency, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, has lost or is losing up to 50 percent of its 8,000 employees. Our entire budget of a couple billion is chickenfeed compared to the enormity of the multiple trillion-dollar Federal budget, yet my former colleagues are taking it in the shorts. In one recent analysis it was estimated that the budget and staff cuts are so severe that NONE of the more than 500 National Wildlife Refuges have enough staff to function properly. I was a participant in the purchase of the first Waterfowl Production Area (using Duck Stamp dollars) in St. Croix County, Wisconsin, in 1974. Now the wetland management office protecting that wetland and 43 others in their jurisdiction, is being shuttered. For what fucking purpose?
Kerber Waterfowl Production Area northeast of Roberts, St. Croix County, Wisconsin, was the first Waterfowl Production Area purchased in Wisconsin. Its future is now in doubt after massive, unnecessary cuts to the US Fish and Wildlife Service budget have shuttered the Wetland Management District office in New Richmond, Wisconsin.
DOGE and tRump have been far more successful in inflicting pain on the Federal government than Dubya’s Presidential Management Agenda ever envisioned. But to what purpose?
Many environmental laws and regulations have been put in place and were functioning to actually make America great. But the trump abomination has eviscerated that progress. The Cuyahoga River was on fire in Cleveland as it drained into Lake Erie in the late 1960s. Its horrible condition was one of the factors that caused Republican President Richard Nixon to sign into law the Clean Water Act. Not long after the Act was put in place the Cuyahoga cleaned up and when tRump took office there were salmon again spawning in the river.
Perhaps it will take the Cuyahoga on fire again before the public wakes up and demands that Congress exercise its oversight prerogative and put an end to the destruction of the Federal government and the Federal workforce.
