By In 2016, Donald Trump famously declared that he intended to “drain the swamp,” the bureaucracy of the federal government that has slowly taken on a life of its own over the past few decades.
Now, Joe Biden has finally found jobs that he wants to protect. The president recently took steps to make it more difficult for his predecessors to reform the massive, undemocratic bloat in the federal government.
The White House has a unique way of revealing who they stand for.
Politico writes that the Biden administration put the finishing touches Thursday on a plan to restrict presidents from unilaterally nixing civil service protections from large swaths of the federal workforce, as former President Donald Trump renews his vow to uproot a perceived “deep state” if he is returned to the White House.
While a future president could take steps to squelch the new directive, it reflects a larger effort by the Biden administration to put a protective wall around its policies.
nder a final rule issued by the Office of Personnel Management, employees whose jobs include civil service protections would not lose them if their position is converted to an exempt category. However, they could choose to waive that security or voluntarily move to a role that serves at the will of the president — typically highly coveted positions toward the top of an agency’s org chart.
The regulations also establish several procedural hurdles for an administration to clear if it wants to shift jobs between categories. Federal workers who believe they are being stripped of their protections could challenge the move with the independent Merit Systems Protection Board.
Biden may be merely paying back one of the special interests that support his campaign. Federal bureaucrats love the Party of More Government.
The Daily Caller reported in January that “over 60% of political donations to prominent political committees made by employees of the federal government’s 15 cabinet-level departments flowed to President Joe Biden and other Democrats in 2023, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of Federal Election Commission records.
The DCNF filtered donations in calendar year 2023 by individuals who listed their employer as one of 15 cabinet agencies, and who donated to the Biden campaign, the Biden Victory Fund, the Trump campaign, Save America PAC, and the respective congressional and senatorial fundraising committees for each party.
Federal employees donated almost $200,000 to Biden’s campaign fundraising arms, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee between January and November 2023. Conversely, federal employees only donated a little over half of that sum, about $116,000, to former President Donald Trump’s campaign committees, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee during that same period.
The DCNF’s findings are likely a significant undercount of total donations as not all people who donate to political campaigns list their employers, and some federal employees may list their employers as subdivisions of cabinet-level agencies not captured in the search of FEC records.”
Conservatives have recently begun a push to remake the federal bureaucracy and with good reason. As The Wall Street Journal explained, the bureaucrats have become out of control and often serve their own interests rather than those of the people they’re supposed to serve.
“Career employees fill almost all federal jobs. Only 4,000 of the 2.2 million federal employees are political appointees. Career federal employees consequently do almost all the work of government. In theory, these career employees should be nonpartisan experts who neutrally implement elected officials’ policies. But in reality they have their own political views and policy preferences.
While many career employees faithfully implement the president’s policies, others don’t. Deborah Birx recently gave Americans a taste of this insubordination. Dr. Birx was a career employee tapped in 2020 to coordinate the White House Coronavirus Task Force. In her new book she boasts about advancing her own policies in defiance of senior White House staff. Senior appointees directed Dr. Birx to moderate lockdown recommendations in federal guidance. She instead deleted the offending materials, then reinserted them in less prominent places in the same documents. She describes this as “subterfuge” to “work around” senior appointees.
In hindsight it is clear the senior staff were right; Covid lockdowns went too far. But Dr. Birx’s actions wouldn’t have been justified even if she had been correct. Career employees should give their best advice to political appointees, but once politically accountable officials make a decision, career staff should implement it faithfully.”
That’s the mentality that Biden hopes to lock in place long after he’s gone.
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