Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said the Trump administration will seek input from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on how best to restructure and shrink the government workforce.
He said the plan, which is in its formative stages, would include reducing the workforce and shifting functions out of government agencies if they think doing so will improve efficencies.
“Not only do we think we can run the government more efficiently than the previous administration, but we think we can run the government with fewer people than the previous administration,” Mulvaney said.
He cited as an example 43 worker training programs that are spread out over 18 agencies, arguing that made little practical sense and that the programs could be consolidated. That would also improve accountability, he said. “We have a saying in the private sector: If everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.”
Mulvaney was light on the plan’s details, though. Asked how many federal jobs the administration plans to cut, he said, “I don’t know.” He stressed that the administration was not going into this with any “ideological” approach on what the government should look like. At one point he offered a hypothetical scenario that the reorganization could result in more federal agencies, not less, but with fewer government workers overall.
President Trump signed an executive order last month calling on the budget office to “improve the efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of the executive branch” through a plan that would include reorganizing the government and “eliminat[ing] unnecessary agencies.”
Mulvaney conceded that getting the changes through Congress would require considerable effort, but he said that Trump wants the changes enough to see the process through. Inertia is a powerful force on Capitol Hill, he said, “[but] it works to your advantage once you do change things because then it becomes hard to change them back again.”
