Editors at the Washington Examiner take note of the president’s latest actions to rein in federal bureaucrats. It’s a process the president’s supporters call “draining the swamp.”
Lost amid the barbecues, parades, and misleading reporting over Memorial Day weekend was good news from the federal capital. On Friday, President Trump signed three executive orders that will improve the federal bureaucracy and ensure government staff are accountable in the way all other workers must be.
The three orders make it easier for bad employees to be fired, limit how much they are paid to do union work, and direct agencies to negotiate better deals against unions. When determining layoffs, federal agencies will also now be allowed to take performance into account, rather than solely basing them on seniority. Plus, unions will be charged for the space they’ve been using for free in federal buildings.
It would seem to any reasonable person that the most amazing thing in all this is that these reasonable arrangements have not always been in place. But actually, more amazing than that is that an administration is at last taking action to end absurd boondoggles and abuses.
In a bureaucracy of 2 million employees, you’re bound to have a few bad eggs. Whether it’s the employee who just can’t seem to show up to work on time, the one who fudged their resume and is vastly unqualified, or the hundreds of federal employees caught watching porn on the job for hours a day, some people deserve to be fired.
