Trump’s Proposal to Revamp Civil Service

Avoid talking about policy: That seems to be a theme of this presidential campaign. Voters now know that Harris was raised middle class, and that Trump has disavowed 900 pages of Heritage Foundation policy proposals.
 
But one policy issue is squarely on the table—civil service. Trump says he will designate 50,000 or more senior civil servants as employees at will. Civil servants in this new “Schedule F” will be like participants of Trump’s television show “The Apprentice,” where the punchline is “You’re fired!”
 
Harris opposes Schedule F as a proposal to “seize power” from “non-partisan government employees” and “replace them with politically appointed Trump Loyalists.” Good government experts have arisen almost in unison to oppose Schedule F, saying it “would be a catastrophe for government performance” to “terrify career civil servants into submission.”
 
Trump’s Schedule F is indeed ham-fisted, but it’s not responsible to ignore the dysfunction of the current federal civil service system. This system ensures near-zero accountability, precludes sensible managerial decisions, and repels qualified applicants with red tape everywhere. Civil service controls drag down public culture, and deprive officials of the pride of taking responsibility.
 
Paul Volcker over 30 years ago sounded the alarm that the civil service system is broken. It is designed for clerks processing forms and is “a relic of a bygone era.” But numerous reform proposals have gone nowhere in Congress because of opposition by powerful public employee unions.
 
Trump’s Schedule F goes too far while doing too little, as Philip Howard explains in this column for Government Executive magazine. But Trump’s assertion of constitutional “executive power” shows a path to reform. Since Congress refuses to overhaul civil service, a president could disavow controls that impinge on the president’s executive responsibility, and let the Supreme Court decide where the line is drawn.
 
As we argue in our last newsletter, it is hard to overstate the harm of not being able to manage government operations. The greatest benefit of overhauling civil service will come from empowering senior civil servants to manage those below them. Senior officials should also be accountable for resisting legitimate political direction, but they have a dual loyalty—to obey law, so it’s not quite as simple as “you’re fired.”
 
The operating structures of federal government are long overdue for overhaul, none more so than its rigid and decrepit civil service system.