A government worker who spoke at a town hall in Leesburg, Virginia, last Monday night revealed that members of the Department of Government Efficiency were conducting interviews with federal employees to “justify their existence.” This would allow DOGE to determine if they were necessary to the agency or if they should be fired.
This unidentified worker from an unidentified agency said he was “nervous and reticent to come up here and speak, just for retaliation purposes.” Here’s what he had to say:
I just wanted to share some things that are going on at my agency. In the last week, we had Elon Musk in our building, and after he visited the building, [he] called for a 50% cut to the entire agency.My colleagues are getting 15-minute one-on-one check-ins with 19, 20, and 21-year-old college graduates asking to justify their existence.Supervisors are being told not to tell their staff anything, withhold information, and today we got word that supervisors must fill out a justification form and that there’s going to be just a 30% rank and yank with all staff in my agency.And to top it all off, one of Musk’s top lieutenants and his wife and young child have shacked up on the sixth floor of our agency and are living there.The hallway’s been blocked off with a special access list for people who can’t get back there. Queer and trans folks of my agency are being doxed in public, their lives threatened.
Democrats will undoubtedly be incensed by this report, and I must admit, it would be difficult to have to justify my job’s existence to a 19-year-old. But as difficult as it may be, the federal government has ballooned to an unsustainable size and with it, the national debt. And draconian as these measures may sound, there is no easier, softer way.
Most of these people should not have been hired in the first place.
Friday’s jobs report, as noted by the Wall Street Journal revealed that in “government, social assistance and healthcare accounted for about two-thirds of last year’s job growth. Employment in most private industries was flat or declined.” Something is wrong when government sector growth is outpacing private industry.
As you might imagine, Republicans celebrated the report. The post has gone viral and the memes are practically writing themselves.
For those who may have missed it, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) presented the strongest case ever for DOGE’s efforts to cut the size of the federal government. He argued that instead of criticizing Elon, “We ought to be giving Mr. Musk a medal. We ought to be thanking him.”
Indeed.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn
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