'Unnecessary kneecapping': Report shows Trump's last big cuts and moves proved costly

Vivek Ramaswamy and the world's richest man, Elon Musk, were on Capitol Hill Thursday to lobby Congress about deep government cuts they want to make to the federal budget.

Ramaswamy has said that he wants to cut one-third of the federal government, which would mean killing the entire federal government as well as some national defense or some of Medicare and Social Security.

Donald Trump said he wanted to cut 100,000 federal workers, and Ramaswamy even quipped that they would do it based on anyone's social security number, ending in an even number.

The Washington Post recalled that this was something Trump had tried to do before, and it was an utter disaster.

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"In 2019, the Trump administration said it would move the Bureau of Land Management headquarters and its nearly 600 jobs to the small city of Grand Junction, CO," wrote financial reporter Todd C. Frankel. "When the new offices opened a year later, just three of the bureau’s employees walked in the door."

Approximately 40 people moved to other offices in the West, but about 90% of the staff left the agency. When President Joe Biden's Land Management appointee took over the agency in 2021, she said they experienced "a giant brain drain." Some of the best-trained and most experienced people in the FBI Laboratory Division, Operational Technology Division, and the Hostage Rescue Team left for the private sector, where they could often make more money, an August report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute showed.

Land Management was the only agency. The Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture were sent to Kansas City.

About 700 jobs were impacted, "according to interviews and a critical government watchdog report that noted the agencies shed half their staff, including in key positions," the Post reported.

Agricultural economist Laura Dodson said it resulted in an “unnecessary kneecapping of an agency.”

The federal government employs about 2.3 million workers, but the overwhelming majority of them are spread across the country. Only about 320,000 federal workers work in and around Washington, D.C.

The Post cited a claim by a pro-Trump "transition group," the America First Policy Institute, that cutting 100,000 jobs would save $1.4 billion annually. While it might sound like a lot, it's a drop in the $6 trillion federal budget bucket.

Even the cuts outlined by the Institute are one one-hundredth of the pledge, citing tiny agencies like the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and the Air Traffic Organization command center.

Trump's cuts and moves also showed that it didn't ultimately save any money. The National Institute for Food and Agriculture's move in 2019 was expected to save $300 million over 15 years. An analysis showed the Agriculture Department miscalculated the rent and didn't add in the cost of moving disruptions. The move ultimately cost taxpayers at least $83 million and staff went from about 550 workers to 85, leaving them severely short-staffed. They managed to fix the problem during the pandemic, when people could work from home and they recruited staffers back.

Read the full report here.