By T.B. Lefever:
Forty-fifth President Donald J. Trump had a busy first full day in office. Our new President penned three executive orders, to include a withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a reinstatement of Mexico City abortion rules, and the implementation of a hiring freeze for federal employees as he sat at his desk in the Oval Office in front of newly hung golden drapes. That’s called “hitting the ground running.”
As a local police officer, I am constantly surrounded by co-workers with hopes and dreams of making the leap into federal law enforcement outfits like the Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Air Marshal Service, and Customs and Border Protection, to name just a few. As soon as I watched Trump’s orders get signed into law, I began to ponder what the hiring freeze would mean for federal law enforcement agencies and those going through the lengthy and arduous hiring processes.
During the campaign, Trump made his case that it was in the nation’s best interest to curtail the continued growth of the bureaucratic monster that Washington has become. In his “Contract with the American Voter,” Trump exempted military and public safety positions from his proposed hiring freeze, yet today there is speculation on whether or not that is in fact the case. The conjecture arose early Monday as President Trump signed the order into law live on national television. Rather than stipulating that both military personnel and public safety would be immune from a “federal employee hiring freeze,” Trump looked into the camera and specified that only the hiring of military personnel would continue, but there was no mention of public safety and law enforcement agencies.
Sometimes, the things that go unsaid speak the loudest.
USAJOBS is the federal government’s official website for applying for jobs. As of early Tuesday morning, a long list of law enforcement job postings are still open at agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, Department of the Interior, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Department of Justice. The good news is that even after today’s announcement, you can still apply to the US Capitol Police. The bad news is that based on my personal experience with USAJOBS, the site is not always the best at staying current. If public safety positions are not safe from the freeze after all, it could be that the site has not yet undergone the maintenance to close and remove the job postings affected by Monday’s executive order. Fortunately, that hypothetical situation won’t be the case.
Officer.com is a great site for all things police-related, including a popular forum where prospective employees of local, state, and federal agencies can share their experiences with one another as they go through the various stages of long, drawn-out hiring processes. After reading through pages of forum posts, it is obvious that candidates for these federal law enforcement positions are in a state of uncertainty right now. With an incalculable amount of time, money, and sacrifice tied up in their efforts, can anyone really blame them? Although there is always the chance that an elected official will welch on even his or her greatest of campaign promises, applying a little bit of logic and paying attention to the source of information — instead of what the mainstream media gives us — can put a lot of the speculation to bed. Per whitehouse.gov, the official press release regarding the freeze declares:
“The head of any executive department or agency may exempt from the hiring freeze any positions that it deems necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities. In addition, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) may grant exemptions from this freeze where those exemptions are otherwise necessary.”
Think about it. One of the “big six” issues this administration prioritizes for our nation is “Standing Up for Our Law Enforcement Community.” How many times during the election cycle did Donald Trump announce himself as the law and order candidate? Increased border security requires more Customs and Border Protection officers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents by default. If Trump can accomplish the former without the latter, he is not a president; he is a wizard.
If we are to escalate our offensive against ISIS, we can only assume that our enemy will ramp up their efforts to carry out terrorist attacks on United States soil. Does anyone think for a second that the Transportation Security Administration will be thinning its numbers in our airports? Will we make domestic and international flights safer with fewer marshals in the air? Will the Secret Service job announcement that closed the day before the freeze be scrapped during a time when even people like Madonna are openly admitting to wanting to blow up the White House? I could do this all day, but you get the point. To freeze federal public safety hiring just days after declaring public safety a seminal cog in the administration’s wheel would be a truly astonishing act of self-destruction that they are, frankly, incapable of.
How, then, do we quantify the benefits derived from a federal hiring freeze when factoring out the military, public safety positions, and any other post the Director of the Office of Personnel Management deems exempt? With a major overhaul of the Affordable Care Act on the horizon, don’t expect the OPM to freeze hiring for the Health and Human Services Department. I don’t know if anyone knows how much money will ultimately be saved, but I do know that the freeze is a master political maneuver that keeps the “drain the swamp” promise alive and pulls at the heartstrings of President Trump’s supporters. I’m for less bureaucracy any time it’s an option.
According to the Heritage Foundation, government auditors spent five years investigating all federal programs, finding that 22% of them cost taxpayers 123 billion dollars annually while failing to demonstrate any positive effect on the populations they are supposed to serve. A report on the Government Accountability Office uncovered a slew of wasteful, duplicate programs that do virtually the same thing. There were 342 economic development programs, 130 programs serving the disabled, 130 programs serving at-risk youth, 90 early childhood development programs, 75 programs funding international education and cultural and training exchange activities, and 72 safe water programs. Washington spends 25 billion dollars annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties. My personal favorite from Heritage is this gem:
“Washington spent 2.6 million teaching Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.”
I didn’t realize just how severe of a problem drunk Chinese call girls was in this country.
Calling jobs associated with these initiatives ‘dead weight’ would be the understatement of the year. Freeze it all.
We all know from this election cycle that President Trump’s entrepreneurial failures are just as well documented as his successes—but had he engaged in the level of wasted resources, squandered investment, and blown capital that the feckless orgy of Washington bureaucrats has been facilitating for years, he would have had to resort to being a cop in Georgia to make ends meet a long time ago. Rest assured, the cost for a smaller federal government will not come at the expense of decreased public safety.
T.B. Lefever is an OpsLens Contributor and active police officer in the Metro-Atlanta area. Throughout his career, Lefever has served as a SWAT Hostage Negotiator, a member of the Crime Suppression Unit, a School Resource Officer, and a Uniformed Patrol Officer. He has a BA in Criminal Justice and Sociology from Rutgers University.
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