Good if true: According to New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is in charge of Donald Trump’s transition team, should he win the presidency he will ask Congress to pass laws making it easier from him to fire government workers.
Trump’s transition advisers fear that Obama may convert these appointees to civil servants, who have more job security than officials who have been politically appointed. This would allow officials to keep their jobs in a new, possibly Republican, administration, Christie said. “It’s called burrowing,” Christie said. “You take them from the political appointee side into the civil service side, in order to try to set up … roadblocks for your successor, kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard when George Bush was coming into the White House.”
Originally these laws were passed to reduce the spoils system, whereby new presidents got to hand out lots of jobs to friends once elected. Now, these laws merely act to prevent elected officials from having any supervisory oversight over the employees they manage.
The article also noted that the Trump campaign is beginning to assemble a list of government workers they want to fire should they win. This is also encouraging, considering the overall incompetence we’ve seen in the federal government these past few years. (I would especially like to see the entire management of the National Park Service fired for the part they played in helping Obama during the government shutdown.) It is time for a purge. If Trump follows through with this, it will be a very positive thing.
Expect a lot of squealing however from the usual suspects in Washington. The key will be whether Trump will have the courage to follow through despite those squeals.
