The Pentagon has moved to allow swift terminations for civilian employees, allowing managers to fire workers with "speed and conviction" if they're underperforming, The Hill reported. The directive came from a Sept. 30 memo issued by Under Secretary of Defense Anthony Tata, which was made public on Tuesday.
"Supervisors and human resources professionals are directed to act with speed and conviction to facilitate the separation from Federal service of employees performing unsuccessfully," the top personnel policy officer wrote. Tata further informed the managing supervisors that they would be held accountable if they failed to take appropriate action on employees who weren't up to snuff.
This memo has stripped civilian personnel of previously held protections against such action, and some worry that this will become an excuse to dispense with those seen as disloyal to President Donald Trump. However, this was something Trump warned about before Democrats decided to allow funding to run out and the government to shut down.
So far, 334,900 civilian employees, which represents about half of that category of military workers, have been furloughed due to the shutdown. The longer it goes on, the greater the chance these cuts will become permanent, as Trump promised.
The left is attempting to frame these cuts as something nefarious, but cleaning house and saving on payroll budgets is exactly in line with Trump's priorities that he laid out during the campaign. Similarly, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been tightening up the ranks to rid the military of those who oppose the president's agenda for a stronger military.
"The sooner we have the right people, the sooner we can advance the right policies. Personnel is policy," Hegseth said last month to an audience of generals and admirals during a meeting he called of top military brass to the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
Earlier this year, Hegseth cut the Pentagon's payroll by 60,000 people, or about 8% of the workforce, through attrition or buyouts. Now, the memo has streamlined the process for managers, giving them the "flexibility to address performance issues swiftly and effectively," Tata wrote.
Managers use the Douglas Factors, the criteria for evaluating federal workers, to decide whom to cut. "This approach empowers supervisors to act decisively when performance undermines [Defense Department] objectives, reinforcing a culture of excellence," the memo touted.
This will ensure that all civilian employees who fill military roles unsatisfactorily will be weeded out, "so deficiencies in any role can warrant strong action." The employees fired under this change can challenge the decision and unfavorable review within seven days.
This action is part of Trump's promises, including his pledge to use a government shutdown to eliminate jobs. On October 8, just a week into the shutdown, Trump said he had a "substantial" number of government jobs that could be eliminated permanently, Fox News reported.
"We have a lot of things that we're going to eliminate and permanently eliminate," Trump told the press at a White House meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. "I'll be able to tell you that in four or five days if this keeps going on… If this keeps going on, it'll be substantial. And a lot of those jobs will never come back. But you're going to have a lot closer to a balanced budget, actually," Trump said at the time.
Meanwhile, Trump blamed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democrats for their failure to act to avoid the shutdown which is now nearly a month long. "I look at your leadership. I don't know who to speak to," Trump said of the Democrats.
"I'll tell you what, I'm getting calls from Democrats wanting to meet. I never even heard their names before... the Democrats have no leader," he added.
The American people voted for Trump to clean up the problems in Washington, D.C., including the dead wood in the military and those opposed to its mission. What's happening now is simply the fulfillment of that, and it's all being facilitated by the spineless Democrats who refuse to agree to funding to reopen the government.
