Trump Admin dismantling Dept. of Education — mass firings underway

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ChileG said:
Why, they did it in the late 90s?
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I was interested so I looked it up. I think the big difference is Clinton worked with an unfriendly Congress to get the budget cut. Congress wanted some cuts, Clinton wanted others and they had to make compromises to make it work.

Some of the other big differences were that the Clinton effort was a much slower and well thought out effort. Clinton's was also much bigger so far. Mostly through buyouts and hiring freezes, Clinton cut about four times as many federal employees as Doge has so far.

I definitely think the Clinton method is the way to go but no one has come close to duplicating it since. Maybe times have changed. It's amazing to me that Clinton got as much done as he did with a hostile GOP in charge of Congress. Trump has the House and the Senate although doesn't have enough to override a filibuster.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I was interested so I looked it up. I think the big difference is Clinton worked with an unfriendly Congress to get the budget cut. Congress wanted some cuts, Clinton wanted others and they had to make compromises to make it work.

Some of the other big differences were that the Clinton effort was a much slower and well thought out effort. Clinton's was also much bigger so far. Mostly through buyouts and hiring freezes, Clinton cut about four times as many federal employees as Doge has so far.

I definitely think the Clinton method is the way to go but no one has come close to duplicating it since. Maybe times have changed. It's amazing to me that Clinton got as much done as he did with a hostile GOP in charge of Congress. Trump has the House and the Senate although doesn't have enough to override a filibuster.
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The Federal Workforce Restructuring Act was signed in 1993.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I was interested so I looked it up. I think the big difference is Clinton worked with an unfriendly Congress to get the budget cut. Congress wanted some cuts, Clinton wanted others and they had to make compromises to make it work.

Some of the other big differences were that the Clinton effort was a much slower and well thought out effort. Clinton's was also much bigger so far. Mostly through buyouts and hiring freezes, Clinton cut about four times as many federal employees as Doge has so far.

I definitely think the Clinton method is the way to go but no one has come close to duplicating it since. Maybe times have changed. It's amazing to me that Clinton got as much done as he did with a hostile GOP in charge of Congress. Trump has the House and the Senate although doesn't have enough to override a filibuster.
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Also, Gore went carefully through all the Departments to maximize efficiency without breaking the law and trashing Article I of the US Constitution.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I was interested so I looked it up. I think the big difference is Clinton worked with an unfriendly Congress to get the budget cut. Congress wanted some cuts, Clinton wanted others and they had to make compromises to make it work.

Some of the other big differences were that the Clinton effort was a much slower and well thought out effort. Clinton's was also much bigger so far. Mostly through buyouts and hiring freezes, Clinton cut about four times as many federal employees as Doge has so far.

I definitely think the Clinton method is the way to go but no one has come close to duplicating it since. Maybe times have changed. It's amazing to me that Clinton got as much done as he did with a hostile GOP in charge of Congress. Trump has the House and the Senate although doesn't have enough to override a filibuster.
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Agreed, we need a well-functioning government where the parties can work together to get things done that everyone really wants, and do it in a way that makes sense. I hope we can get to that place one day.
 
ChileG said:
Agreed, we need a well-functioning government where the parties can work together to get things done that everyone really wants, and do it in a way that makes sense. I hope we can get to that place one day.
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Is close but you're never going to get things that everybody wants. Everybody wants different things. Folks have to be willing to put up with things they don't want to get the things they do want. Compromise is a dirty word in Washington lately.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Is close but you're never going to get things that everybody wants. Everybody wants different things. Folks have to be willing to put up with things they don't want to get the things they do want. Compromise is a dirty word in Washington lately.
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Yeah, we are old enough to remember when compromise was seen as a positive thing.
 


“… Hundreds of users reported FAFSA outages to Downdetector starting midday Wednesday, saying they were having trouble completing the form, which is required for financial aid at colleges nationwide. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, a group of people who handle colleges’ financial aid awards, also received reports of users experiencing technical issues and having trouble completing the FAFSA.

“We’ve been trying to get more clarity on why it’s down,” said Allie Bidwell Arcese, a spokeswoman for NASFAA. The Education Department hadn’t shared any information on the outage, she said. “The maintenance and troubleshooting may be impacted by yesterday’s layoffs.”

The developers and IT support staff who worked on the FAFSA form were hard hit in the Education Department’s layoffs Tuesday, along with staff buyouts and the termination of probationary employees. In all, the Education Department has reduced its staff by half, to roughly 2,000, since Trump took office.

… A list of laid-off staff obtained and verified by AP shows more than 300 people cut from Federal Student Aid — two dozen of them from Federal Student Aid’s technology division. That included the entire team responsible for systems supporting the FAFSA form, a person with knowledge of the outage told The Associated Press, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation. While laid-off staffers are still technically employed until March 21, they had limited access to their email, phones and computers, making a response to the outage difficult, the person said.

At one point Wednesday, about 70 people had joined a Teams call to try to pinpoint the cause of the outage. The call continued for hours. By Wednesday evening, the website carried a banner claiming “Planned Maintenance” was underway, and login access was cut off. …”
 
nycfan said:


“… Hundreds of users reported FAFSA outages to Downdetector starting midday Wednesday, saying they were having trouble completing the form, which is required for financial aid at colleges nationwide. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, a group of people who handle colleges’ financial aid awards, also received reports of users experiencing technical issues and having trouble completing the FAFSA.

“We’ve been trying to get more clarity on why it’s down,” said Allie Bidwell Arcese, a spokeswoman for NASFAA. The Education Department hadn’t shared any information on the outage, she said. “The maintenance and troubleshooting may be impacted by yesterday’s layoffs.”

The developers and IT support staff who worked on the FAFSA form were hard hit in the Education Department’s layoffs Tuesday, along with staff buyouts and the termination of probationary employees. In all, the Education Department has reduced its staff by half, to roughly 2,000, since Trump took office.

… A list of laid-off staff obtained and verified by AP shows more than 300 people cut from Federal Student Aid — two dozen of them from Federal Student Aid’s technology division. That included the entire team responsible for systems supporting the FAFSA form, a person with knowledge of the outage told The Associated Press, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation. While laid-off staffers are still technically employed until March 21, they had limited access to their email, phones and computers, making a response to the outage difficult, the person said.

At one point Wednesday, about 70 people had joined a Teams call to try to pinpoint the cause of the outage. The call continued for hours. By Wednesday evening, the website carried a banner claiming “Planned Maintenance” was underway, and login access was cut off. …”
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Billionaires don’t care
 
ZenMode said:
Who is 'they'?
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People who work for the government. They spent a lot of time using professional government employees to actually look for efficiencies, and worked within the law.
It took years, but it worked.
This is how it works in the real world with well-meaning professionals. Not just slashing and gutting everything in sight (and against the law) with the goal being not to balance the budget, but to give yourself a tax break.
 
ChileG said:
People who work for the government. They spent a lot of time using professional government employees to actually look for efficiencies, and worked within the law.
It took years, but it worked.
This is how it works in the real world with well-meaning professionals. Not just slashing and gutting everything in sight (and against the law) with the goal being not to balance the budget, but to give yourself a tax break.
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Okay. That was the initiative put into place by Bill Clinton and then executed by other people..
 
ZenMode said:
Okay. That was the initiative put into place by Bill Clinton and then executed by other people..
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Correct. It is important to elect good, intelligent people (i.e. not Trump) and have professional, experienced, well-meaning people (not Musk) to do the hard work that needs to be done.
 
ZenMode said:
I have no faith in the government's desire to self-regulate to "right size" itself.
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Do you have more faith that Elon Musk and Donald Trump (although the latter is, as president, "the government") can put the country over their own financial interests? Because I trust traditional government a lot more than chaos monkeys banging at typewriters.
 
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