On Jan. 28, President Donald Trump offered approximately 2 million federal employees “deferred resignation” — the chance to resign and receive payment until Sept. 30. While claiming to “improve efficiency” with support from Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump’s plan to shrink the federal workforce reflects an ulterior motive for deliberately dismantling the federal government: a scheme harming citizens both inside and outside the workforce.
The buyout of federal employees, threatening the largest job cut in U.S. history, will further reduce the quality of services the vast majority of Americans rely on. The future of the thousands resigning from their positions is uncertain, with concerns over the buyout’s feasibility and sustainability; most federal agencies’ funding expires on Mar. 14, and buyouts are legally bound to a $25,000 limit, which would be surpassed. Workers’ livelihoods are gambled with terminations that face legal hoops and fail to show a clear roadmap towards increased efficiency or an end to economic plights.
Workers choosing to remain in their jobs still face the risk of job dissolution without compensation; Trump’s offer forcibly pressures them to resign. Currently, many federal agencies are already understaffed from frozen or slashed budgets, according to the National Treasury Employees Union President Doreen Greenwald. Beyond stringent hiring regulations and oversight from DOGE, there are no plans to maintain or support the only further strained federal services.
Federal agencies like the Department of Education or Department of Agriculture help fund public schools like Oxford through Title-1 funding, derived from its 39% low-income student population. Despite effects seeming invisible to the average citizen, their impacts are substantial; regulations include everyday services from food to public health. Department worker cuts bleed into the quality of services the average American depends on, widening inequality gaps.
While reducing the federal government’s bureaucracy may minimize federal expenses amidst economic turmoil and national debt, Trump’s plan cuts essential services and neither supports Americans’ needs nor is economically feasible. In 2022, about 60% of the $271 federal citizen payroll in 2022 went to agencies exempted from the buyout, meaning the federal government would likely still run high deficits even with high resignation rates. Trump prioritizes downsizing “unnecessary” costs above serving the American people.
The label of rigid “bureaucracy” often glooms over the federal government as a pejorative, yet its formal systems have sustained the nation for ages. Instead of grossly misstepping his presidential duties and attempting to resolve a system he deems unfit, Trump must consider America’s reliance on workers instead of making them victim to the government’s willful and arbitrary job dissolutions. Shrinking the federal government only increases the gap in the American people’s needs the president can’t fulfill.
