Now that Trump is heading back the White House, once again promising to "drain the swamp", let's consider how that might actually be accomplished.
It's damn near impossible to fire federal employees and abolishing entire agencies is very difficult politically. The later hasn't been done since Jimmy Carter. Of course, I'm all for Ron Paul and Elon Musk pursuing both of those paths, but they'll definitely be ice skating uphill.
There are two proposals that I know will result in massive voluntary resignations, labor savings, and reduction in DC bureaucrats:
- Relocate departments and agencies away from the major metropolitan areas
- Rescind locality pay for remote eligible workers
The first option was implemented by Trump for a couple of agencies. It was big news in econ world when the USDA was relocated, because hundreds of USDA economists resigned.
I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement the second idea (perhaps @Cje95 can weigh in), but it would also have a dramatic effect. During the pandemic, the feds followed the trend of making many positions remote work eligible. However, the federal pay scale still grants locality based pay increases for those living in expensive areas. If you are allowed to do your job from anywhere, why should you get an enormous raise (at taxpayer expense) for living in the most expensive place in the country? Pay all remote eligible workers as though they live in rural Arkansas, because they are allowed to do so.
As with the relocation, most workers would probably resign rather than either move or take a huge paycut. And, if they don't, then at least the federal workforce is getting spread out and not costing nearly as much.
What are some other feasible ways to dramatically reduce the federal workforce?
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