| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
People want to have voter identification. | |
| You want to have proof of citizenship. | ||
| Ideally, you have one-day voting, but I just want voter ideas to start, and I want the water to be released, and they're going to get a lot of help from the U.S. Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll see you in a little while. | |
| We'll see you at the site. | ||
| We'll see you at the site. | ||
| Tell us more about the deportation flights. | ||
| Where are they going from? | ||
| Where are they going to? | ||
| The deportation is going very well. | ||
| We're getting the bad, hard criminals out. | ||
| These are murderers. | ||
| These are people that have been as bad as you get, as bad as anybody you've seen. | ||
| We're taking them out first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| We're back at Washington Journal, and we're joined now by Max Steyer. | ||
| He's president and CEO for the Partnership for Public Service. | ||
| We're talking about the overhaul of the federal workforce by the Trump administration. | ||
| Max, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mimi, it's great to see you and great to be here. | |
| Just a remind us about the Partnership for Public Service, its mission, and its funding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| So we are a nonpartisan organization dedicated to a better government and a stronger democracy. | ||
| Anyone who's operated a nonprofit organization knows that funding is always the hardest part. | ||
| We get our money from philanthropy, corporations, fee-for-service, work for government. | ||
| And we started originally from a gentleman named Sam Heyman who had this idea 25, some odd years ago, that we needed the nonprofit sector helping our government work better because you make your public institutions better. | ||
| That raises all votes. | ||
| Explain why you think it's important to focus on the civil service as opposed to political appointees. | ||
| Why is that important to your organization? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we actually do focus on both. | |
| We originally started just for civil servants because there was work that another organization was doing on the political appointees. | ||
| But the reason why our strong emphasis is on the civil service is that at the end of the day, the political appointees are setting the policy agenda for our government, but they come and go, and it's part of the democratic process. | ||
| You have elections, presidents get elected, they set the agenda. | ||
| They have a set of political appointees. | ||
| I would say way too many of them, 4,000, more than any other democracy, peer democracy in the world. | ||
| But at the end of the day, it's the career civil servants that are getting the work done day in and day out. | ||
| There are about 2 million of them. | ||
| 85% or so work outside of the DC area. | ||
| Something like a third of them are veterans because they are mission-oriented people. | ||
| And many folks, when they leave the military, want to keep serving the public, and the civil service is the way to do it. | ||
| And for 140 years, it's been apolitical and based on the idea that you need the most competent, merit-driven people focused on getting the work done for the public. | ||
| We had a spoil system before that change, and it led to corruption and incompetence, and ultimately assassinated president in Garfield. | ||
| I'm sort of collapsing everything into one quick thing here. | ||
| But for Republicans and Democrats for 140 years, that notion of a career professionalized civil service has been fundamental to the success of our country. | ||
| And President Trump has signed an executive order mandating all federal workers back in the office in person. | ||
| Elon Musk tweeted out or posted on his network X saying this, pretending to work while taking money from taxpayers is no longer acceptable. | ||
| What's your response to Elon Musk? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, I mean, the response is start with the facts. | |
| About half the federal workforce never was able to work remotely. | ||
| Even during the worst of the pandemic, they were on the front lines. | ||
| They were putting themselves at risk as they do in so many different ways. | ||
| If you look at the numbers today, and we have a fact sheet on this, anyone wants to see it at ourpublicservice.org, the truth of the matter is that federal employees are pretty similar to the larger private sector workforce in terms of their percentages that work remotely or that telework. | ||
| The real question isn't whether you're working in the office or you're working in some other location. | ||
| It's how good your work is. | ||
| And federal employees, by and large, do a very strong job. | ||
| There are definite ways that things can be improved. | ||
| The idea that the right thing to do is to drive everybody back into the office is not actually going to deliver better results for the American people. | ||
| And I give you a really quick example: the Patent and Trademark Office. | ||
| We are the envy of the world in terms of the innovation climate that we have in our country. | ||
| And the Patent and Trademark Office is really the heart of the system that protects and grows our intellectual property, that supports innovation. | ||
| And it has been, you know, virtually exclusively a remote workforce, telework workforce, you know, for I think over two decades with incredible productivity. | ||
| You follow through on that executive order of saying that they all have to come back into the office. | ||
| There are no offices for them because they've been working for two decades, not in the office. | ||
| And you will throw into turmoil that core engine of innovation for our country. | ||
| I can't imagine that Elon Musk actually wants that to happen. | ||
| It would be disruptive to his world in profound ways and to the economic vitality of our country. | ||
| That's an example. | ||
| Let's manage smartly, not by the edict that is across the board the same thing. | ||
| There are different parts of our government that needs different kinds of management. | ||
| And that's what good leaders do, is they understand the context and they make choices based on evidence and thoughtfully. | ||
| This has not been thoughtful. | ||
| And we'll take your calls for Max Steyer on the federal workforce. | ||
| Our numbers are Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| If you're a federal worker, we have a line for you, and that is 202-748-8003. | ||
| Max, the Trump administration, as you know, has directed all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion staff to be put on leave. | ||
| Layoffs are expected. | ||
| Can you first tell us what those DEI offices in the federal government were doing and why they were there in the first place? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Certainly. | |
| And again, not to take too long on this, because there's sort of a substantive issue and then there's another process issue, a little bit like the return to the office edict. | ||
| You asked what the offices did. | ||
| It's a wide range of different activities. | ||
| Many of them were very much involved in trying to create workplace environments that maximize the engagement of the people in the federal workforce. | ||
| And when I say that, it's the basic proposition of how do you create a workplace that enables your workers to do their best in the work environment that they have. | ||
| You know, sometimes people focus just on the D. When you look at equity, inclusion, and accessibility, again, it's about trying to make sure that our federal environments are serving the public better through creating environments that enable workers to do their work the best they can possibly do it. | ||
| But Max, can't that be abused? | ||
| Because the criticism here is that hiring is prioritizing less qualified people just because they are either women or minorities, et cetera. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, look, absolutely. | ||
| You ask, can it be abused? | ||
| And the answer is absolutely. | ||
| And those abuses should be addressed and addressed seriously. | ||
| And so this is, again, an example of trying to resolve this through an across-the-board rule without any understanding of any nuances is generally not good. | ||
| And honestly, the reality of this is the Trump administration has the right. | ||
| You know, President Trump was elected president of the United States. | ||
| He does get to set the policy of our government within certain legal constraints. | ||
| And, you know, these are choices that he can make. | ||
| I want to focus on the how it's being done and the fact that the how is actually wasteful of public assets and hurtful of real people. | ||
| And when I say that, what I mean is that the civil servants that were working in DEIA spaces, they were following the prior administration's priorities. | ||
| You know, President Biden said this was a priority for himself and for his administration. | ||
| And the civil servants do what civil servants are supposed to do. | ||
| They're supposed to follow the lawful directive, policy directives of duly elected leaders. | ||
| They should not be punished for doing their job in the way they're supposed to do it. | ||
| And you have President Trump's administration arguing that civil servants are not following the policy views of the elected leaders. | ||
| And the reality is here they did. | ||
| They should not be punished for it. | ||
| It is, again, President Trump's prerogative to choose a different direction. | ||
| But immediately shutting down the offices, putting all these people on administrative leave and telling them they're all going to be fired is cruel and it's a waste of public resources. | ||
| Many of those people are in those DEI offices, not because they only do DEI stuff. | ||
| It's that they were asked to do that work. | ||
| They might be HR professionals that could apply their skills in many, many other contexts. | ||
| The right thing to do would be to say, we're no longer focused on this as a priority. | ||
| We're going to move away from it. | ||
| We're going to assess the talent that we have to think about, is there another place that they can really contribute to public outcomes that we do care about, and to communicate in an open and embracing way of those people. | ||
| These are real people. | ||
| It has been unbelievably traumatic and unnecessarily traumatic to them. | ||
| And this is but one of many, many examples where the humanness of the federal workforce is being ignored. | ||
| So again, entirely appropriate to choose a different direction. | ||
| The way it's being done is hurting people and frankly hurting the American public. | ||
| They're losing out on great talent and our government is being disrupted in ways that are going to preclude Americans from, frankly, being safe. | ||
| Quick example, 160 or so folks from the National Security Council, the best experts we have on counterterrorism, on Russia, on China, sent home in order for there to be a review of whether they're sufficiently loyal. | ||
| Not smart, puts us at risk and not the way to do this. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers now. | ||
| Joe is in Baltimore, Maryland. | ||
| Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How you doing? | |
| Good? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have just one question, and a couple parts to that question. | |
| Are the lines that the people use from their house, are they secure when they talk over the phone? | ||
| Second, that one question. | ||
| How come you got to wait 36, sometimes 24 hours to talk to a person? | ||
| And then when you talk to them, you hear the dogs in the background. | ||
| And I joke with them. | ||
| They talk about, and I ask myself, you got two of this on your hands. | ||
| In other words, it has to be some balance. | ||
| Sorry, Joe, just to clarify, when you say, are the lines secure, you're talking about when you call the federal government asking for help, let's say if you call the IRS or if you call Social Security, that kind of thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Joe? | |
| In that house, that person in that house using their little laptop, whatever they're using, is that line secure from that house to you? | ||
| Aren't other people listening? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And then you wanted to know why does it take so long for somebody to answer your call in the government? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| In other words, if we can get rid of a voicemail, if we can get rid of a whole bunch of things that are logistically stupid, other words, if I have a problem and you chump me call you back in 24 or 48 hours, that is counterproductive. | ||
| And one more thing, people are people. | ||
| Why are you going to have all these buildings? | ||
| And it's like going into countries like North Korea where you have buildings with no people in it. | ||
| Come on now. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Max Dyer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, so number one, 100% agree that the public, including Joe, should be able to expect high customer service from federal agencies. | |
| That's the responsibility of our government. | ||
| We really need that oftentimes critiques of the career civil servants, we actually need leaders to help make sure that that's a priority and that the investments that are needed to achieve that are actually being done. | ||
| A good example of this is the IRS. | ||
| They had incredibly low response rates prior to the more recent investments in the IRS. | ||
| And those response rates went up to, I believe, in the 90-plus percent category. | ||
| And there was intent to take them even better. | ||
| So we do need a government that is changed. | ||
| So I share Joe's view that we should be able to expect good customer service, phone calls that are answered, good technology, and responsiveness that you see in the kind of best-in-class private sector organizations that exist today. | ||
| And there are all kinds of ways in which better and better is possible. | ||
| In order to have that happen, investments are going to be needing to be made in our government and in the technology infrastructure that we have today. | ||
| And frankly, those investments don't usually occur. | ||
| In terms of the security of the lines, it depends on, I think, the interaction. | ||
| I don't really think I can speak to that specifically. | ||
| I will say that, frankly, many federal employees I mentioned earlier have never been able to work anywhere but in the office because of that very question. | ||
| If they are in dealing with classified information, they have to work in a skiff in a official government building. | ||
| Last point that was raised there, I think, was the empty federal buildings. | ||
| And a lot of agencies have been reducing their real estate footprint because they've moved to a situation where fewer employees are coming into the office. | ||
| One of the real challenges will be that if they're all forced to have everyone come back into the office after they've reduced that footprint, there's nowhere for those folks to actually work. | ||
| So again, the transition time has to be thought through. | ||
| Otherwise, you're going to have disruption to the services that Joe and many, many other Americans expect rightly to have. | ||
| Gregory is on the independent line in Nashville, Tennessee. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Listen, this is so funny. | |
| Trump wants to hire people that he says are merit-based, but yet he's hiring people that are not qualified for the job. | ||
| As a matter of fact, to be honest with you, he's not qualified to be president. | ||
| And the other thing is, why don't the Democrats speak up and say something about the people that he's hiring? | ||
| Let me just speak like really blunt with it based on what he's saying about people being merit-based. | ||
| And one more thing. | ||
| When I call a help desk, I always get somebody from India. | ||
| I have nothing against Indian people. | ||
| But the thing is, why don't the people who have these companies hire Americans to be on the call, be in the call centers to help Americans? | ||
| I mean, this is one thing that Trump could probably do. | ||
| If he just, you know, change that system, make his people that are sitting behind him, because they're the ones who are hiring these people, these people who are, you know, running all these tech companies. | ||
| They're the ones who are hiring these people in India to do the job because it's cheaper, of course. | ||
| Why don't he tell them to hire Americans to do their jobs? | ||
| Okay, that's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right, Gregory. | ||
| Max. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so on the question of hiring for merit, the caller has the same views that virtually all Americans in the polling that we've done demonstrates. | |
| So whether you're Republican or Independent or Democrat, we have found in our polling that Americans actually do want a merit-based, apolitical civil service. | ||
| So it's great to see that that is the consensus across the country. | ||
| And the question is, how do you best get that? | ||
| And there are real changes that should take place in the way our civil service is managed, in the way that it's hired, the way in which civil servants are accountable. | ||
| We actually have a sort of aggressive full plan about what we'd like to see done. | ||
| The reality, though, is that the current plans of the Trump administration would take us the absolute opposite direction. | ||
| I mentioned earlier there are 4,000 political appointees. | ||
| Truthfully, as the caller noted, we should have very high standards for those folks as well. | ||
| The focus should be on their competence and their character. | ||
| But the president has a lot of latitude in selecting who those folks are. | ||
| The Senate has its voice by the Constitution for some 1,300 of them. | ||
| But the broader, you know, 2 million federal workforce is a career workforce. | ||
| It is currently merit-based and needs to stay that way. | ||
| The Trump administration has issued an executive order that would really overturn that. | ||
| And it's a real problem because, again, we will wind up with less good government in a very profound way if, in fact, that's carried through. | ||
| Your organization put out a press release, Max, quoting you as saying that you were encouraged by some of the executive actions taken by the Trump administration, specifically as it relates to federal hiring processes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| No, very important. | ||
| And look, at the end of the day, we all should be looking for places to come together to be constructive. | ||
| There's too much fighting, and that's not how we're going to actually make progress. |