Jim Papa: DOGE is destroying a national resource – staffers
By Jim Papa
Five years ago, I embarked on a project to spotlight “staffers” – those over-caffeinated, overworked, underpaid people who serve in government. Through a podcast where I interview people who have worked at the federal, state, and local levels, and as a former White House and Congressional staffer myself, I’ve been able to appreciate the grit and determination of these true public servants firsthand. They do important work – mostly anonymously and for less pay than they could make elsewhere – because they believe in the enterprise of our own self-government.
Serving one’s country or state or community as a staffer is not only noble, it’s important. Government generally does the things that “We, The People” want or need but that the private sector either can’t or won’t provide at a price that’s accessible to most people. These government functions are essential for our well-being. We all like well-maintained roads, bridges, and airports. We all like clean air and water. We all like the fact that when a natural disaster strikes, there are people who run into the affected areas to help. There is no right or left when it comes to these essential needs. At least, there shouldn’t be.
What the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is doing to these important government functions and the staffers who perform them is both mindless and dangerous.
Now, let me stipulate: I think we all want government efficiency, too. I’m all for a committee that looks across the government, works with people of all parties, and strips out everything that is either no longer necessary or can be done well with less money. We can use the savings to pay down the debt, invest in things we need, return it to taxpayers, or some combination of all three.
Unfortunately, that’s not what DOGE is doing. All credible reporting – including self-reporting by people inside the Trump Administration – is that DOGE is creating incentives for people to leave government service through a legally dubious “buyout”; running word searches on websites and HR records for terms related to DEI and climate; accessing payment systems and using AI to recommend cuts; and lopping off personnel (and sometimes whole agencies) without even a modest claim to a sober review of need, cost, and priority.
It’s the dumbest way I could think of to reform the system. And it’s not because I’m a skeptic of AI. But as Axios reported recently, “AI is known for inaccuracies — errors the industry has come to call ‘hallucinations’ or ‘confabulations.’ Unless the technology’s conclusions are carefully double-checked, they can lead to costly mistakes.”
Spoiler alert: there is no careful double-checking. That’s why we see so many mistakes coming from DOGE. Many of the fired civil servants at the FDA and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were funded by industry fees, not tax dollars. They weren’t even costing taxpayers anything! No savings were achieved by these cuts, just loss of brainpower. DOGE fired the head of the Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the safety of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile – only to later ask that staffer to return. Cuts at the FAA, including in the area of critical infrastructure needed for air traffic control, are causing safety experts to raise the alarm loudly that air travel is going to be more dangerous.
You have to ask, why are we giving ourselves a lobotomy?
Not only are these cuts detrimental to essential services that affect our daily lives, but they are also overwhelmingly unpopular. A recent poll by Navigator Research, fielded by Global Strategy Group (where I work), found that three in five voters are concerned about cuts to government funding and personnel.
Personally, on my podcast, I’ve interviewed nearly a hundred staffers from all levels of government, Democrats and Republicans, with myriad experiences. Here is one thing they’ve all agreed on: Government staffers are a national treasure. They are a deep resource of expertise, skill, experience, and yes, patriotism. They are part of the scaffolding that keeps our democracy upright.
We should want people to consider it an honor to take jobs in public service. As citizens, we all benefit when staffers are mission-driven, hard-working, ethical people who want to do their jobs well for their country and community. And we should want them working within a system that operates as efficiently and thoughtfully as possible.
Unfortunately, what DOGE is doing is the opposite of all that. Its work has been described by Republicans as “awful” and “indiscriminate.” You may have read that DOGE is mostly firing “probationary employees,” in other words, people who have been in their job less than one or two years. You could be forgiven for thinking, therefore, that “probationary employees” are young professionals who haven’t been in government very long. Not true. Hundreds of thousands of these people are simply new to their current position because they were promoted in the last year or two. They had exceptional reviews and, therefore, were given more responsibility! And even if they were young people, this approach entirely omits an evaluation of performance and need. These are talented Americans who are being fired without regard to their quality of work or the necessity of their role.
Sadly, I have a feeling that when our government operates less well because of all this indiscriminate cutting, it’s the people who support the hack-and-slash approach who will be the first to complain.
If you agree that there is a better way to enhance government efficiency than sending Elon Musk and his youthful sidekicks into every taxpayer-owned agency, then call your elected representatives and demand that they hit the brakes on DOGE and empower a bipartisan government reform commission with a clear mandate and a deadline for action.
And when you call, remember that you’ll be talking to a staffer. So thank them.
Jim Papa is Partner and head of the Washington, D.C. office at Global Strategy Group. He is also the host of the podcast, STAFFER. Prior to joining GSG, Jim was Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs in the Obama White House and spent many years as a staffer on Capitol Hill.
