President Trump Has Eliminated Waste by Slashing Bureaucracy and Congress Should Lock in His Success
Key Findings
- It cost nearly $360 billion to compensate the 2.3 million federal employees in 2023.
- Government employees are far less likely to be fired than private sector employees, even in cases of misconduct or poor performance.
- Partisan federal employees have vowed to use their positions in government to block the Trump administration from implementing policies.
- President Trump is cutting waste and bureaucratic bloat, which will usher in a new era of accountability and efficiency.
Overview
In 2024, there were nearly 2.4 million federal employees, excluding the uniformed military and the postal service.1 Despite the three branches of government being coequal, 97 percent of civilian federal employees work for the executive branch.2 More than 2.3 million people work for executive branch agencies, while 35,500 work for the legislative branch, and 33,100 work for the federal judiciary.3 Employment in the executive branch continues to grow, with more than 220,000 employees added between September 2019 and September 2024.4-5
These employees are well paid, and their salaries and benefits contribute to rising federal deficits.6 In 2023, the cost of compensation, including wages and benefits, for federal employees was nearly $360 billion and is estimated to increase to more than $384 billion in 2024.7 Spending on compensation for federal employees has grown faster than employment, growing by more than $90 billion since 2019—a 31 percent increase.8
The average total compensation—wages and benefits—for a federal employee is more than $160,220 annually, compared to $94,404 in the private sector.9-10 Benefits such as retirement, health insurance, life insurance, and paid time off for federal employees are 43 percent higher than in the private sector.11 Nearly all federal employees have access to a defined-benefit pension plan, compared to just 15 percent in the private sector.12-13 The federal pension plan promises high payouts to those who work for the federal government for more than five years, with an average monthly benefit between $2,126 and $5,447.14 In 2024, the cost of pensions and health care for federal civilian retirees topped $127 billion.15
In addition to pensions, federal employees have access to other generous benefits that exceed what is common in the private sector. Government workers receive paid leave for 11 holidays, 13 days of sick leave, up to 26 days of vacation leave, 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, tens of thousands of dollars in student loan forgiveness, and subsidies to offset the cost of commuting and childcare.16
Federal employees are shielded from routine oversight and accountability
Rigid federal employment regulations and laws, as well as union protection, make federal employees difficult to fire or take any disciplinary action against, even in cases of poor performance or misconduct.17 The involuntary separation rate for federal employees is 0.2 percent, compared to 1.1 percent in the private sector.18 This means that the average private sector employee is more than five times more likely to be laid off compared to a federal employee. Because government agencies are not subject to market forces, they can just request larger budgets and more employees to cover the productivity gap left by poor performers, rather than taking action to improve productivity.
Federal civil service laws outline the process that agencies must follow if they wish to discipline an employee for poor performance or misconduct.19 Before an agency can take action against an employee, there is a litany of procedural hoops that managers must jump through.20 Then, if the agency takes a serious action like reduction in pay, demotion, suspension of longer than 14 days, or termination, the employee is entitled to 30 days’ notice and can prepare an appeal before the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB).21
After an appeal is accepted by the MSPB, the adverse action proceeds without settlement or reversal in just 35 percent of cases.22 Settlements can include monetary compensation in exchange for the employee leaving the agency voluntarily, or a suspension instead of a termination.23 Often the employee’s record is expunged, and the employee is free to apply to other federal agency jobs without any record of wrongdoing.24 The average first-level appeal takes 102 days to decide.25
Union involvement makes the process of taking an adverse action against an employee even more difficult. When using the union’s grievance arbitration process, 58 percent of terminated employees won reinstatement.26 Arbitration takes an average of 17 months, and in 84 percent of cases, agencies had to pay back wages to employees who had been terminated.27 Taxpayers are on the hook for the union leaders preparing the grievance using official time and the legal expenses of the government lawyers who defend the agency actions.28
The difficulty of taking action against a poor performer combined with the risk of the action being overturned on appeal or through the grievance process makes agencies less likely to pursue termination or demotion.29 This contributes to the attitude that it’s impossible to fire federal employees and easier to shift them around to different departments instead.
Partisan bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. have vowed to subvert the Trump administration
In addition to incompetence, it is also difficult to discipline federal employees for outright subversion of the administration that they work for. During the first Trump administration, federal employees were hard at work sabotaging new policies that President Trump directed.30 Attorneys at multiple agencies undermined efforts to defend Trump administration policies in court by producing unusable products.31 Staff also withheld information from political appointees and leaked to the media.32 At the Department of Health and Human Services, employees altered documents to circumvent the hiring freeze, and workers at the Department of Labor slow-walked the implementation of new rules.33
The last four years have not produced a change of heart. In 2025, nearly half of federal employees reported their intention to resist the Trump administration.34 Already, employees have been placed on leave at multiple agencies, including USAID, for refusing to implement directives from the Trump administration.35 Federal employee unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) have led the charge in filing legal challenges to actions taken by President Trump to cut waste.36
Most federal employees in the executive branch are career civil servants, not political appointees.37 While these career employees are supposed to be non-partisan workers, they are overwhelmingly Democrats—by a two-to-one margin compared to Republicans.38 Among the Senior Executive Service—highly paid employees serving in roles just under political appointees and responsible for implementing major policies—the partisan bent is even stronger with 55 percent Democrats and 25 percent Republicans.39
The partisan makeup of the bureaucracy becomes a big problem when unelected employees actively work to disrupt and subvert the policies of the president. The executive branch of the federal government is supposed to be under the control of the elected executive. The president and vice president are the only members of the executive branch that are directly accountable to the American people through elections, and career civil servants are responsible for executing their policies. Federal employees using government agencies to subvert the president and enact their own agenda undermines our system of government and demonstrates why changes to civil service protections are necessary.
President Trump immediately took action to bring accountability to the federal government and cut waste
Fortunately, President Trump has taken action to bring accountability and efficiency to the federal workforce.
- Schedule F: President Trump restored “Schedule F,” which is a new category of federal employees who are in roles related to policy implementation.40 These employees will be exempt from certain adverse action procedures that apply to other federal employees.41 This will ensure that employees who are in policy-adjacent roles are held accountable for faithfully implementing the policy directives of the president and his appointed agency leadership.42 This order also directs the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to rescind the regulations put in place at the end of the Biden administration that seek to shield federal employees from accountability.43
- Hiring freeze and voluntary resignation: President Trump instituted an immediate hiring freeze for executive branch positions, excluding military and public safety positions.44 The order also prohibits creating new positions or contracting to circumvent the freeze.45 This allows agencies and the Office of Management and Budget time to develop a plan to shrink the size of the bureaucracy through attrition and reorganization. In addition, the Trump administration has offered a severance package to employees who voluntarily resign, a strategy that has been used in the past to drive reductions in government headcount.46
- Return to the office: President Trump has also ordered federal employees to return to the office.47 Particularly in Washington, D.C., many bureaucrats have been working from home since the COVID-19 lockdowns, leaving federal buildings sitting mostly empty, and requests for assistance from taxpayers unanswered.48 OPM reported that nearly 70 percent of federal employees were teleworking at least some of the time.49 The Government Accountability Office has found that agencies are incapable of measuring the impact of teleworking policies on performance, and there are countless examples of telework causing program delays and increased wait times for taxpayers seeking services.50
- Focus on merit: President Trump directed agencies to hire federal employees based on merit, performance, and a commitment to improving efficiency.51 This executive order seeks to reduce the time it takes to hire a new employee and integrate technology to improve recruitment and selection.
However, this progress can all be undone with the stroke of a pen if a future administration wants to bring bureaucracy back. Congress should pass legislation to make government efficiency and accountability permanent. First, Congress should require agencies to eliminate federal positions that have been left unfilled for months. This policy has been successful at the state level in reducing waste and shrinking the bureaucracy.52
Congress should also codify the president’s authority to implement a hiring freeze and require employees to work in the office. Additionally, Congress should consider changes to the merit system to hold employees accountable for poor performance or misconduct, allow pay raises according to merit as opposed to seniority, and give the government more agility to respond to changing needs.
The Bottom Line: Congress should work with President Trump to hold bureaucrats accountable and eliminate waste by reducing federal government headcount by at least 25 percent.
Over the last four years, executive branch agencies have added hundreds of thousands of employees and implemented across-the-board pay raises while confidence and trust in government institutions have reached all-time lows.53-54
President Trump took immediate action to revoke the wasteful policies of the Biden administration. He replaced them with his own directives to ensure that federal employees are held accountable for poor performance, reduce bureaucratic bloat and waste, and stop federal employees from subverting the implementation of new policies. Congress should work with the Trump administration to lock in these policies and permanently reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy by at least 25 percent.
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