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Musk's Destruction of the Federal Workforce Hurts All of Us [1]

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Date: 2025-02-14

On November 5th, 2016 we were driving eastward on I-90, starting our 2,000 mile journey to our new lives in a new state. This was a big change, brought on by a “perfect storm” of circumstances. The funding for my job at the university had expired, and the house where we had lived for many years was being sold. With nowhere to work and nowhere to live, things were going to be different. Fortunately, opportunity presented itself. I was hired by the Smithsonian in Washington, DC to join the team building the new paleontology exhibits at the Natural History Museum, so we were driving there.

Like most Americans, we were anxiously awaiting the results of the 2016 elections. As the returns came in and it became apparent that Donald Trump would be the president, I looked over at my wife and said “Well, should we keep going?”

We really didn’t have a choice, as all of our stuff was in a moving truck somewhere out on the road on its way to Virginia. I figured that we were about to see a lot of craziness over the next few years (I was not wrong…) but I had faith that if I showed up and did the work at the museum, we would be okay economically, and I was very proud to serve my country be creating exhibits that would inspire and enlighten millions of visitors from all over the world. My experience there was amazing, and I worked with a fantastic team of some of the most knowledgeable and competent technicians, scientists, educators, and artists that my field has to offer.

Last night we learned that thousands of federal employees are losing their jobs. The exact impacts of the directive from President Musk are not yet clear, but if even only the part that terminates employees who are in their probationary period (usually their first year of employment) is carried out, about 220,000 people will lose their jobs.

Had I started my job at Smithsonian in November of 2024 instead of November of 2016, I could be among them. How many families have spent money they didn’t have to move to another city for a federal job only to have it disappear in an instant? How many existing employees who have mortgages, leases, kids in schools and roles in their communities will now have to upend their lives because Elon decided that they’re not needed and they don’t matter? How many of the public services and resources that we’ve all come to depend on and enjoy (hello, public lands) will be diminished and dysfunctional?

I’ve seen a lot of commentary about how this “audit” is simply a long-overdue peek under the hood of the government, looking for things that aren’t working and making more efficient use of our tax money. Not only do these assurances ignore the blatant illegality of these actions (only Congress - not the executive branch - has the authority to spend federal money; see 1974 Impoundment Control Act for details), but they fail to understand what an audit is and how it works. Auditors examine the financial structures and processes of an organization and report their findings. For even a small organization or business, that process can take weeks or months. For large entities, the auditing firm might have dozens of financial and legal professionals on the case. The DOGE team (composed of a handful of people who are not accountants or legal professionals - they’re software engineers) is making decisions within hours or days, And crucially, when real auditors are examining an organization, they do not tear it apart or close it down while they examine it. They don’t cut your head off to do a dental exam.

What Musk and his crew are doing is not an audit.

They’re demolishing the federal government and stripping it for parts in an effort to “save” money to pay for more tax cuts for billionaires like Musk. That’s it. He’s flat out stated that his goal is to eliminate - not to streamline or optimize. In a recent video call he said "I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind," Musk said via a videocall to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. "If we don't remove the roots of the weed, then it's easy for the weed to grow back." My coworkers and I (and my own mom who was herself a federal employee for decades) are not weeds, Elon.

By the time Musk’s wrecking crew is done, almost nobody will be left untouched by their destruction. 90 million Americans are on Medicaid. 70 million of us receive Social Security benefits (which we’ve paid for). 42 million receive SNAP benefits. You DO know people who will be hurt if the proposed Republican budget goes into effect. And unless you’re making hundreds of thousands per year, you ARE those people.

This moment is politically possible (for now, at least) thanks to the decades-long relentless drumbeat of “government is the problem” that has conditioned too many to believe that government is just a black hole that sucks up our money and wastes it on dumb things. It’s politically popular (often in both parties) to point at the federal budget or the debt and say “Oh - the spending!” But those dollars aren’t just going into a black hole. They’re invested in our infrastructure and into us. (You know, that whole provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare thing…) Should we use them efficiently? Of course. But the things America needs won’t pay for themselves, and whittling away at our country while handing all the money to the rich does not work. We’ve tried it multiple times, as $50 trillion has moved from the bottom 90 percent of us to the top one percent over the past few decades. Now instead of Congress doing the whittling, we get a billionaire broligarch that nobody asked for throwing entire programs and departments “into the wood chipper,” as he likes to say.

And this isn’t just about our money. It’s about our morality, and our ethics. People are cheering as the richest man on earth take away food from the poorest people on earth while he steps on the rest of us, and justifying it with “efficiency.” Pardon me if I don’t share their enthusiasm, but this will not end well for anyone. It’s not D vs. R, it’s us vs. Musk and is billionaire peers. That’s getting clearer by the minute. Hopefully it won’t be too late before enough of are willing to see it. But we’re all about to feel it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/14/2303794/-Musk-s-Destruction-of-the-Federal-Workforce-Hurts-All-of-Us?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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