Trump has named billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency effort aiming to cut $2 trillion in federal spending<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to drastically cut government and clean out inefficiencies, but he faces an entrenched power in Washington, D.C. that may throw a wrench in his plans: federal government public employee unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor president-elect Trump to succeed at making the federal bureaucracy more efficient and accountable to the American people, he\u2019ll have to once again do battle with federal unions,\u201d Max Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation, told The Center Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has tapped top businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency effort. Musk has claimed he can cut $2 trillion in federal spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a November joint editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Musk and Ramaswamy pledged \u201cmass head-count reductions\u201d in the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Firing federal workers is notoriously rare and difficult, but Ramaswamy has publicly said that mass, indiscriminate firings may allow for circumventing the usual bureaucratic holdups for firing a federal employee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump himself recently pledged to cut \u201chundreds of billions\u201d in federal spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGovernment unions are hands down the single most significant defenders of the administrative state,\u201d Nelsen said. “Their interests are always served by bigger, more expensive, less accountable government, and their partisan allegiance to the radical Left leads them to both overtly and covertly undermine conservative policy changes across the federal government\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first battle with unions in the DOGE war may be federal work from home policies, where unions have already threatened legal action to protect their pre-arranged deals with the Biden administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump threatened to fire federal employees who are not willing to report to the office, a clear shot at federal work-from-home policies, something Musk has also blasted in recent weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf people don\u2019t come back to work, come back into the office, they\u2019re going to be dismissed,\u201d Trump told reporters during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The largest federal employee union quickly shot back after Trump made the comments and threatened legal action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s comments are likely at least in part reacting to a Biden administration official negotiating a deal with a union that extends until 2029, after Trump is scheduled to leave office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n