'If You Can Keep It': The Future Of The Federal Workforce

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4.4 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and billionaire businessman Elon Musk are heading the president-elect's new Department of Government Efficiency – a non-governmental agency that they say will reduce waste and streamline the U.S. federal agencies.

But the so–called DOGE is only one tool the president has in mind for slashing the federal workforce. And as more details emerge, the futures of the nation's career civil servants are in the balance.

We discuss what these plans mean, not just for federal workers, but for the country as a whole.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club,
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0:25.6	Music or older to purchase. You're listening to the 1A podcast. I'm Jen White.
0:28.7	And I'm Todd's Willick.
0:29.8	More than 2 million Americans serve as career civil servants in the U.S. federal
0:34.0	workforce. President-elect Trump's team is promised to reduce federal spending
0:38.4	in part by cutting many government employees. Now those plans are looking more concrete.
0:43.7	We expect mass reductions. We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright. We expect mass
0:48.8	reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts
0:53.4	among federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government. are bloated. We expect massive cuts among federal contractors
0:54.6	and others who are overbilling the federal government. So yes, we expect all of the above. And I think
0:59.9	people will be surprised by, I think, how quickly we're able to move with some of those changes.
1:04.4	That's entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaking recently on Fox News.
1:10.4	He and billionaire businessman Elon Musk are
1:12.8	heading the president's new Department of Government Efficiency, a non-governmental agency that they say
1:17.9	will reduce waste and streamline the U.S. federal agencies. But the so-called doge is only one tool the
1:24.2	president has in mind for slashing the federal workforce. And as more details emerge,
1:29.2	the future of the nation's career civil servants is in the balance. On Friday, Trump announced
1:34.7	Russell Vout, a co-author of Project 2025, as his choice to lead the Office of Management and Budget,
	...

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