Saving Money by Getting Rid of Useless Government Workers: Congressional Republicans Should All Quit
The title of this column is intended to be a bit cheeky, but the point is a serious one. Republicans have long said that they hate government -- and in particular the federal government -- because they are certain that it is inherently and deeply wasteful. Their talking points are frequently aimed at "lazy bureaucrats," and they love to tell everyone how terrible government employees are. As one of a zillion examples, they have always attempted to justify their insanity over the debt ceiling by invoking made-up nonsense like the so-called Boehner rule (every one-dollar increase in the debt ceiling must be accompanied by two dollars in annual spending reductions), all based on the fervent and unchallenged belief that the government is wasting "your" money.
Indeed, to hear Republicans tell it, the government is not merely a bunch of human sponges doing nothing while drawing fat salaries that they do not deserve. In their view, government workers not only waste money but harm the world when they do anything at all. Ronald Reagan's farcical claim that the "nine most terrifying words in the Enlgish language" are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" captures that vibe. In that view, we should affirmatively want government employees to do nothing.
The second Trump Administration's shocking (but predictable and indeed predicted) lurch toward autocratic rule has included illegally shutting down government agencies and trying to force government employees to quit or be fired. According to recent reporting: "The end goal is replacing the human workforce with machines,' said a U.S. official closely watching DOGE activity. 'Everything that can be machine-automated will be. And the technocrats will replace the bureaucrats.'" In other words, this is happening because President Musk thinks that people are stupid, annoying, and kinda icky. The "technocrats" in his ideal world are not even human.
For what it might be worth, my former employers at the University of Florida are (along with every other university and nonprofit administrator in the country) panicking about Trump's unilateral cuts to federal funding. I took special note of the following sentence at the end of a campus-wide email: "Finally, please know that university leadership values the vital work you do that impacts lives and improves our world on a daily basis." That is coming from one of the most in-the-tank-for-Republicans state universities in the country, but even they felt the need to say that government spending is not a waste.
Now let us think about the Republicans in Congress. As I have noted at various points in the last few years, the end of the road for Trumpism is dictatorship, which means that there is no longer any reason even to have a legislature. As Trump's cavalcade of unqualified (at best) Cabinet nominees have been going through their Senate confirmations, the question arises again and again: Why are even the few Republicans who seem to know better knuckling under? Yes, Susan Collins declares herself "concerned" on occasion, and she joined Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell to vote against Pete Hegseth's appointment as Defense secretary. But so what?
During the post-election transition period, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst made noises about opposing Hegseth, but then she caved and went along. Given that nothing but more bad news came out about the nominee between the time Ernst initially withheld her approval and her decision to vote yea, what could she possibly be thinking? And given that she hung her three dissenting colleagues out to dry, it is hardly surprising that they are now all falling in line to avoid Trump's wrath.
I can think of only one answer to the question of what Ernst or any other member of Congress might be thinking, which amounts to this: "If I don't do what I'm told rather than what I'd like to do, I'll lose my power. Trump will have me driven from office, and then where will I be?" The honest answer to that question in turn is: "Exactly where you are now, with no power." One might add: "And probably making a lot more money than your $174,000 salary (which, because you've acquiesced in the anti-government madness, has not changed since 2009)." And one additional thought: "You also won't have to spend all of your time sucking up to political donors for campaign cash."
The point is not merely that there is life after one leaves Congress. That has always been true, and the people who stayed there were either honestly convinced that they could do something good that no one else could do or were simply addicted to power. The point, however, is that they truly did wield some power, and that is what has now changed. In order to stay in office, they have no choice but to agree never to exercise any independent judgment or to make any decisions that have not been approved by the boss. The only way to keep "power" is never to use it, which means that they no longer have power at all.
This is also no longer a matter of asking only what older officeholders are thinking. During the 2024 presidential campaign, for example, I noted that the current governor of Ohio is both term-limited and will be 80 years old when he leaves office in two years. Even so, he could not bring himself to withdraw his endorsement from Trump even after Trump and his goons endangered the people of Springfield, Ohio -- all of the people there, not just the resettled refugees -- by backing the claims that had brought neo-Nazis from around the state to menace that small city. The governor was too much of a coward to exercise actual independent judgment even though he is the governor of the state in which that was happening and knew that the pet-eating claims were lies. And by the way, it was happening in the Ohio city where the governor himself was born. Yeesh.
As inexplicable as that was, my comments in that context at least implied that a younger person might be excused for doing the wrong thing. After all, if they have the desire to maintain their political viability to be able to make later runs for higher office, then maybe they will choose their battles strategically. But the post-January 20th world in which they now live is one in which no one has any power, no matter their office or title. You can be 80 or 30 or anywhere in between, but everyone suddenly faces the non-choice of leaving or becoming a potted plant in office.
So why should they not give up the ghost and resign en masse -- not in defiance of Trump, because this would in fact please Trump's boss? While they are in Congress, they are doing nothing and serve no purpose. Oversight hearings? Get real. Even the Senate confirmations are ridiculous, because (as I noted last week) it does not matter whether Hegseth or any of the others (with the exception of RFK, Jr.) are sitting in various offices or not. The man who (understandably, to be fair) thinks that he is the Treasury Secretary, for example, has exactly zero chance of taking back control of the government's payments system from the DOGE-bags. In November, Trump tried to get the Senate to go into recess so that he could fill his administration with anyone he wanted and not worry about confirmation hearings. The Republican leaders appeared not to comply, but how is this different?
One might note that the House and Senate would, after my recommended Republican exodus, have Democratic majorities of 215-0 and 47-0. But so what? Trump is going to do whatever he wants, no matter what. Musk could get one of his minions to change everyone's passwords and lock them out of the Capitol and congressional office buildings. Even if the Supreme Court were to try to stand in the way, J.D. Vance is already on record as saying that Trump should invoke Andrew Jackson and simply defy the Supreme Court.
Vance, too, is now utterly unnecessary. He could have as much influence on Trump and Musk as a private citizen backed by his finance bro billionaires as he has now. That that level of influence is "none" under either scenario hardly changes the point. And when the Supreme Court decides to save itself by finding ways to bless Trump's power grabs, they too will have traded away actual power in favor of "institutional preservation," where the institution has been gutted of all meaningful authority. John Roberts has surely enjoyed being the Chief Justice of the United States. Will he continue to like it now that he dares not do anything to cross the supreme leader?
Even if, as above, the overall "end goal is replacing the human workforce with machines" in terms of the government writ large, the Trump monarchy has made it unnecessary even to replace the human workforce in Congress and the Courts with machines. Those jobs have been made obsolete, and the money spent on them is being taken from your wallet!
Ah, but there is a key point that I have not yet addressed. Even though Trump is increasingly talking about continuing in office after his current term is scheduled to end in 2029, he does not have the power to turn back time or defy human physiology. He is 78 and in terrible health now, and his cognitive decline has become ever more difficult to ignore. He might or might not live for another four years, but at some point he will be gone. What then?
One possibility, of course, is that Musk will at that point declare himself to be President. (Heck, he might even do that while Trump is still around.) As likely as that seems to be, however, let us put it aside for the time being. As a constitutional matter (how quaint!), the next President would be Vance. But the reality is that none of the people who have long put their own presidential ambitions in check to stay on Trump's good side believe that Vance should be President. Imagine that Trump shuffles off the mortal coil in, say, early 2026. The entire clown car -- Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and on and on -- then empties out, and everyone will be at each other's throats the second after they take Vance out of the picture.
All of those people, in turn, will view their government jobs as important arguments for being President. Even though they profess total disdain for government, they will all say that their x years in the Senate or the House or the Cabinet make them uniquely qualified to be the new Big Guy. So they will want to keep their now-otherwise-pointless government jobs, simply to be in a position to get in on the big post-Trump food fight. At the very least, however, they should have the decency not to cash their paychecks in the meantime. Or Musk could just replace them all with AI now.