Is Shutdown a Masterstroke in Reducing Federal Workforce and Eliminating Saboteurs?

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A lot of people think President Donald Trump is crazy. Though, they often ignore all of the instances in which he has been crazy like a fox, laying traps that Democrats and the Establishment walk right into as he earns the applause of the Everyman in the hinterlands across the nation. The partial government shutdown, now the longest in history, could be one more of these instances according to some, including a anonymous senior administration official writing for the Daily Caller.

According to that essay, federal government employees can be subject to a ‘Reduction in Force’ order after 30 days of a shutdown, essentially being fired, and the author is hoping this will eliminate the scores of career bureaucrats in the executive agencies that have been working against the president’s agenda all the while.

From the Daily Caller:

“As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.

Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.

The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.

On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.

Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position — some do this in the same position for more than a decade. […]

Saboteurs peddling opinion as research, tasking their staff on pet projects or pitching wasteful grants to their friends. Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.

Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. […]

President Trump can end this abuse. Senior officials can reprioritize during an extended shutdown, focus on valuable results and weed out the saboteurs. We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them.”

So was this all part of the plan when Trump held a televised meeting at the White House with good ol’ Chuck & Nancy, in which he invited a shutdown? Thomas Lifson of American Thinker certainly believes that is a possibility.

“If this was the plan all along, it would explain why President Trump goaded Chuck and Nancy in his televised meeting with them last year, boasting that he would claim credit for the shutdown.  How could they resist a prolonged shutdown when he made it so easy to blame him?

President Trump has proven that he is a “disruptor” who changes the framework of thinking on major issues by refusing to accept the “givens” – the assumptions of how things always have been done and therefore always must be done.”

Trump, from the very beginning has embodied what it is to be a disruptor, that much is clear. He seems to relish in playing these games of chicken within tough negotiations, and the Democrats always seems to underestimate him.

We’re only a few days away from hitting that magic 30 day number – will the Reduction in Force follow? And if so, what does that process look like?

Learn more from the American Thinker here.