The Democrat party was deaf to the plight of the Keystone Pipeline cancelation and the estimated elimination of between 16,000 and 59,000 jobs.  But now they are losing their minds over the proposed job cuts that Elon Musk and Cabinet heads have targeted in reducing the federal workforce.

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their teams believe (rightly) that the federal workforce is a bureaucratic behemoth, with many employees, erm, allegedly working from home.

It has been estimated that of the 2.3 million federal employees, spread across dozens of agencies, only 54% regularly work in the office.  The president has deemed this unacceptable and has offered government employees a very generous buy-out package to quit their jobs.  For others, he has instituted reduction-in-force mandates to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs.

But why are the Democrats so up in arms?  Didn’t Bill Clinton and Barack Obama make major cuts to the federal workforce?  Well, for one, it is Donald Trump making the cuts.  Anything that President Trump does is automatically opposed by Democrats.   

Secondly, a vast majority of government workers have patronage jobs — ways to pay constituents for their support of the Democrat party.

According to Open Secrets, between 93 and 97% of all political donations made by government employees goes to Democrats, with 3 to 7% going to Republicans.

Government doles out cushy, high-paying jobs, and workers and unions kick back donations to party apparatchiks.  When it comes time to vote, it is then in the employees’ best interest to keep the gravy train rolling by voting for the hand that feeds.

There is or has been no incentive for the government to maximize efficiencies because the patronage money rolled on under any and all circumstances and regardless of which party was in power.

In the free market, an entrepreneur or employee wants his business, his sector, and the whole of the economy to grow, because top-line growth trickles down to him in the form of opportunity and increased wages.

Donald Trump and his team have calculated that eliminating patronage jobs will eliminate a major drag on the economy.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.