Dick Morris: Trump Flushes Out Swamp with Civil Service Exec. Orders
President Donald Trump just keeps on keeping his promises.
The president has signed three key executive orders revamping the way the entire civil service system works in the federal government … the very essence of the swamp.
No longer will taxpayers have to fund labor union activities by federal employees. Almost 500 Veterans Affairs employees, for example, work full time on union activities instead of helping veterans. That includes 74 full-time nurses.
Taxpayers currently have to pay union negotiators whenever a new contract or new amendments are being negotiated with the government. Total cost: $16 million.
No more.
Thanks to Trump, all labor contract will be published and available for the public to view.
And most importantly, the standards for dismissing, removing or demoting public employees are going to be changed to make these procedures easier.
It now takes between six months and a year to remove a tenured federal employee for poor performance and an additional eight months to handle appeals. That makes tenured federal employees forty-four times less likely to get laid off than workers in the private sector.
Under this flawed system, federal employees have stayed on the job after they have been caught stealing agency property or running personal businesses from work, and even after they have been arrested for using drugs during lunch breaks.
These people need to go.
But there is one more step Trump must take: banning IRS labor unions.
We do not permit employees of the FBI, CIA, NSA or other such agencies to form or join unions. IRS employees, however, belong to the all-powerful Treasury Employees Union, whose contract grants them a substantial role in the management of this all-powerful agency.
The IRS scandals of the previous administration testify to the way the IRS union helps to seed the civil service system with liberals and leftists who want to use its powers to level class inequalities and vindicate ideological agendas.
There should be no unions in the IRS, just like there are none in the military or national security sectors.
Trump should ask Congress to add the IRS to the existing bans on unionization in these parts of the government.
Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Bill Clinton as well as a political author, pollster and consultant. His most recent book, “Rogue Spooks,” was written with his wife, Eileen McGann.
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