EDITORIAL: Number of government workers falls under President Donald Trump

One little-noticed accomplishment of Donald Trump’s first year in office: a smaller bureaucracy.

The Washington Post reported last week that, at the end of September, virtually every Cabinet department had fewer workers than when the president took office in January. The exceptions included Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Interior.

The departments of Treasury, Education and Labor suffered the biggest attrition.

All told, the federal government had 16,000 fewer employees in September than just nine months earlier. The shrinking workforce is in stark contrast to Barack Obama’s first three quarters in the Oval Office, when Washington added 68,000 permanent workers, the Post reports.

Many of the reductions reflected the administration’s hiring freeze and a concerted effort to leave vacancies unfilled. Others were a result of disgruntled employees leaving when the administration proposed a more fiscally responsible budget outline for a number of federal agencies.

In a statement to the Post, White House spokesman Raj Shah said Mr. Trump “is committed to streamlining government for the 21st century, reducing bloat, duplication and waste, and focusing resources on key priorities like public safety and protecting the nation’s homeland.”

The Post reports that morale has suffered because of the reductions. That’s no doubt true in many cases, but Mr. Trump’s effort to make sure the taxpayers get their money’s worth is long overdue. Government efficiency and performance suffer when managers turn a blind eye to incompetence, sloth or poor performance.

“For those inside the bureaucracy, a new Trump-era focus on accountability has meant working under greater oversight,” the Post notes. “Agencies have told employees that they should no longer count on getting glowing reviews in their performance appraisals, according to staff in multiple offices, as has been the case for years.”

Oh, the humanity!

An attorney whose firm represents federal employees told the Post, “There’s a feeling out there that they’re not going to get as much pushback for trying to fire someone.”

And this is a bad thing? Why should federal bureaucrats be immune from the consequences of poor performance when the private-sector taxpayers who cover their salaries and benefits enjoy no such protection?

In addition, a little perspective is in order. The federal government still had 1.94 million employees at the end of September, the Post found, up significantly from the 1.8 million workers employed when Mr. Obama took office. Thus, the Trump reductions amount to a cut of barely eight-tenths of 1 percent.

Looks as if the president has a lot more work to do.