Jun
25
Project 2025: A Plan to Dismantle the Deep State
“The great challenge confronting a conservative president is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power — including power currently held by the executive branch — to the American people.” — Russ Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Donald Trump
I have written here-and-there about governmental bureaucracy before. It is often guilty of overreach and can be a great hindrance for getting things done. Despite making some progress in reducing federal bureaucracy, President Trump met a lot of resistance from these unelected and entrenched bureaucrats. Not surprising, since most of them these days are Leftists.
In an attempt to give some guidance to the next conservative President, the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” (aka the 2025 Presidential Transition Project) has produced a plan to dismantle this “deep state”. In addition to eliminating the pro-abortion/pro-transgender Gender Policy Council, most of the recommendations can be found in the “Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy” report, co-written by Paul Dans (ex-Office of Personnel Management, current director of Project 2025), Donald Devine (ex-OPM), and Dennis Dean Kirk (ex-OPM, current assoc. dir. for personnel policy for Project 2025).
Here are the four main areas for reform:
1) Streamline the Firing Process
“Firing bad employees requires a herculean effort, the authors note. They recommend restructuring the process of disciplining and terminating federal workers.” Trump signed an E.O. addressing this, which Biden subsequently overturned. “The report encourages reinstating it.”
2) Curb Union Power
“Public-sector unions help explain how the bureaucracy has become so entrenched, the report claims…. Over time, federal agencies narrowed management rights, even though they still exist in law. A conservative president should reinstitute those rights, the report urges…. Trump issued three executive orders to restrain union abuses, [which Biden later revoked.] [T]he report urges a future president to reinstate them.”
3) Market-based Pay and Improved Efficiency
“Federal employees receive wages 22% higher than wages for similar private-sector workers, according to a 2016 Heritage Foundation study. With the value of employee benefits factored in, that ratio rises to between 30% and 40%…. They receive more vacation and paid sick leave, retire earlier (normally at age 55 after 30 years), enjoy richer pension annuities, and receive automatic cost-of-living adjustments based on where they retire…. [The report] also encourages a president to… improve efficiency and eliminate duplicate functions across the administration. Congress did not approve the Trump administration’s proposed consolidations.”
4) Schedule F
Trump issued an E.O. that created the “Schedule F” category of federal employee. “Positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character not normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition shall be listed in Schedule F.” Agency heads could now transfer careerists in such positions, “mak[ing] them functionally at-will employees, much easier to fire.” Again, Biden reversed this order, but the report encourages a future president to reestablish it.
“The report also encourages a future president not to cut political appointees as a cost-cutting measure. It faults the Trump administration for failing to remove political appointees from the Obama administration, instead relying on them and on career civil servants to run the government while Trump’s appointees struggled to receive Senate approval. This ‘led to a lack of agency control.'”
Intrigued? If you want a bit more info, you can read the full article from “The Daily Signal” here.
