Downsizing the U. S. government this way will destroy its effectiveness without increasing its efficiency

Before cutting the ranks of U. S. government employees who safeguard the nation's nuclear material and respond to nuclear accidents, it would seem wise to ask them exactly what tasks they are assigned and how they accomplish them. Apparently, that was not a consideration when the Trump administration through its U. S. Department of Government Efficiency Service (currently run by billionaire Elon Musk) began firing personnel at the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA).

What is happening at the NNSA is a window into why merely downsizing an organization does not necessarily increase its efficiency. On its website the NNSA explains that it has the following missions:

1. To ensure the United States maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile.


2. To prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear or radioactive material that could be used in an attack on the United States, its interests, or allies.


3. To provide effective nuclear propulsion plants to the U. S. Navy.


4. To prepare for nuclear and radiological incidents and accidents through planning, training, and exercises and respond to nuclear and radiological incidents and accidents worldwide.

This is not an exhaustive list, and it seems like pretty important stuff for which a careful evaluation of required staffing would be crucial, both the number of employees needed and the expertise of those employees. For now it's not clear who was fired. Even some of the employees who believe they were fired are unsure they are no longer employees as the firings were "paused." That's how chaotic the process has been.

And, that's just one small agency within a government that does a lot of other pretty important stuff that we expect government to do. Other agencies respond to public health emergencies such as pandemics. Yet others respond to emergencies such as hurricanes and floods. Most people are familiar with the Federal Emergency Management Agency which coordinates responses among many agencies in such instances. Some agencies perform routine tasks such as making sure recipients of Social Security payments receive them. One wonders what kind of reaction we might see from the public if the effectiveness of these employees in the Social Security Administration were to be disrupted.

How personnel reductions might impair the effectiveness of any group is informed by a general rule of thumb used by the U. S. Army regarding the effectiveness of fighting units after taking losses:  "[A]n enemy combat unit is considered suppressed after suffering 3% personnel casualties or material losses, neutralized by 10% losses, and destroyed upon sustaining 30% losses." The percentages are this small because as losses mount, they include critical personnel without whom the entire unit cannot function effectively. These might include communications and intelligence personnel.

It's worth considering more broadly how the administration says it is planning to cut the federal work force in order to understand how this might alter the effectiveness of that work force. (I will not speak to the legality of these firings as this would require a piece all to itself.)

In the U. S. government, oftentimes critical work is done by contractors. (The proliferation of contractors in the U. S. government is in part a consequence of earlier attempts to appear to reduce the size of the government by keeping the number of direct government employees down—often referred to as reducing "head count"—which then necessitated hiring contractors to do the work previously done by federal employees—sometimes at higher cost.) It easier to fire contractors than to fire federal employees protected by civil service laws and regulations. But firing contractors often takes key people from teams that are a mix of direct federal employees and contractors. I know a federal contractor who fits this description and who was terminated.

A second category targeted by this so-called efficiency drive are probationary employees. Those employees do not enjoy civil service protections until they reach the end of their probation period, usually within one or two years of starting a job. This makes them easy to fire. However, the same problem discussed above regarding contractors applies to probationary employees. Federal employees (and, in fact, employees everywhere in large organizations public and private) rarely do their jobs alone.

They are connected to a large web of other employees with whom they must interact and coordinate. Plucking probationary employees from the web does not take into account how those employees fit into the work flow of an agency nor the distribution of such employees among agencies. For example, about a quarter of all probationary employees are believed to work for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). This would imply that 13 percent of the VHA work force is set to be fired. That seems like a number that would "neutralize" the VHA, that is, make the VHA ineffective or at least very much less effective.

How many probationary employees are there currently in the U. S. government? Though the numbers keep changing, there appeared to be about 220,000 in March 2024. Additional numbers will give us perspective. The total civilian federal work force stands at a little more than 3 million. (Incidentally, the total civilian federal workforce peaked in 1990 and has drifted slightly downward except for spikes that appear to be related to hiring census workers for the decennial U. S. census.)

Of those 3 million civilian federal workers, 775,000 are civilian defense employees. Since the Trump administration wants to increase defense spending, it is probably safe to assume these jobs are staying. That leaves about 2.25 million other jobs that may be subject to cuts. We don't know how many of the 220,000 probationary employees work in defense, but cutting all of this class of employees comes perilously close to the 10 percent cut which the military would say could cause a group to become "neutralized." How much of the U. S. government the public would tolerate being "neutralized" is not clear, assuming that means the affected agencies are no longer capable of carrying out their mission.

Could agencies re-organize to provide the same services they do now with fewer personnel? It might be possible in some cases. But that would take time, planning and probably some upfront additional investment. The Trump administration seems uninterested in this approach.

Worth noting is what the firing of federal civilian employees might save. Last year those employees were paid about $350 billion in total. The federal budget was $6.5 trillion. Compensation to federal employees then works out to be 5.4 percent of the entire budget. If the Trump administration were to fire half of the total work force it might reduce the federal budget by 2.7 percent (if the firings were equal among all levels of pay) or about $175 billion. But, of course, firings are currently concentrated at the lowest level of pay (probationary employees) and that means an even smaller reduction would be achieved. The trillions of promised reductions in federal spending cannot come from firing employees.

The real money in the federal budget is found in Social Security (21 percent), Medicare (15 percent), national defense (14 percent) and other health care which almost certainly includes Medicaid (13 percent). It is difficult to imagine that major cuts in these would be popular with the public or in Congress.

Given all this, it is worth asking whether the cuts in federal personnel are really about efficiency. On these facts, either the authors of the cuts don't understand what they are doing OR they intend to "neutralize" government agencies so that those agencies are no longer effective. That certainly fits with the deregulatory agenda of the Trump administration. But will it sit well with the public when the routine services, emergency help, public health programs and environmental protections they count on are no longer effective or in some cases even available?

UPDATE Feb. 16 at 9:57 a.m.: Federal firings have now hit USDA laboratories across the country crucial to tracking the bird flu that is devastating poultry flocks and spreading fast through cattle. Those expecting this administration to bring down food prices should take note.

UPDATE II Feb. 16 at 10:29 a.m.: The Trump administration is now trying to rehire some of the people it fired from the National Nuclear Security Agency mentioned at the beginning of this piece. But because they canceled the fired employees' email accounts, they don't have a way to reach them easily.

Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.