Vivek Ramaswamy recently outlined plans within the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E), which he and Elon Musk will lead, to cut unnecessary regulation and wasteful government spending. According to Ramaswamy, part of making the government more efficient will include a large-scale reduction in government bureaucracy and the firing of many federal employees.
Vivek pointed out that, as the leader of the executive branch, the president of the United States should have authority over who the federal government employees, just as a leader of a private sector company would. “I think it turns out that the US President, novel idea, just as the CEO of a company has over his company, the US president has authority to decide who is or is not hired in the executive branch,” he said.
Ramaswamy addressed supposed regulation, which many argue would hinder the president’s ability to fire civil servants. “Now, the main objection to this is that there are so-called civil service protections. Okay? These are supposedly protections that stop an executive from being able to unilaterally fire somebody who is part of a federal employee or has special employee protections in the bureaucracy,” he said.
However, he pointed out that when evaluating the rules, they only apply to individual firings, not mass firings. “We gotta read the rules carefully. Those employee protections protect against individual firings. They do not protect against mass layoffs.” Vivek added that large-scale layoffs will be required to correct the course of the federal government. He added, “And mass firings are absolutely what we require to fix the Washington DC bureaucracy.”
Ramaswamy proceeded to outline a hypothetical scenario to illustrate how these mass layoffs might be carried out. Under this scenario, federal employees would be fired based on random criteria based on their social security numbers. “If you had a president, who came in on day one said something to the effect of…treat it as a thought experiment for now…if your social security number ends in an odd number, you’re out. If it ends in an even number, you’re in,” he said.
“Now you get in round two. If your social security number starts in an even number, you’re out. And if it starts in an odd number, you’re in, that’s a 75% mass headcount reduction across the bureaucracy, which is completely compliant with the Civil Service protections because they do not protect against mass reductions in force,” he continued.
Earlier this week, President-elect Donald Trump announced that Elon Musk and Raswamy would be leading D.O.G.E. “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement. Musk was quoted in the statement as saying “this will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”
Watch Vivek below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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