Although Doonesbury comics are now limited to Sundays, Garry Trudeau’s talent for coming up with obscure facts continues to amaze me, and the strip of 3/16/2025 is no exception.
https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2025/03/16
Who remembers that
the Clinton administration eliminated 426, 000 jobs, consolidated 800 agencies,
and eliminated 640,000 pages of rules?
Those facts don’t
exactly spring to mind, do they?
Surprisingly, those
facts are actually true.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-trump-federal-workers/
Context
According
to testimony from Elaine Karmarck, the director of Clinton's initiative, it
eliminated 426,200 federal roles between January 1993 and September 2000.
Looking back on the 1990s,
it's strange to imagine a time when a presidential campaign was won on a
promise to balance the federal budget. Bill Clinton did it, too — the U.S.
federal budget had a surplus between 1998 and 2001, the only time there's
been a surplus since 1970. (The government's debt is $36.22 trillion at
the time of writing).
In January and February
2025, U.S. President Donald Trump began giving Elon Musk's Department of
Government Efficiency (DOGE) increasing control over government services in an
effort to eliminate federal government programs and dramatically slash spending.
Some media outlets claimed
Trump and Musk's methodology was unprecedented. In
response, social media posts appeared pointing
back to a Clinton-era initiative that "oversaw the termination of 377,000
federal employees," as evidence that Trump and Musk had simply
"learned from the master."
It's true that during his
presidency, Clinton reduced the federal government's workforce by more than
377,000 employees as part of an initiative called the National Partnership for
Reinventing Government (initially called the National Performance Review, or
NPR). However, there's a
key difference between how Clinton's NPR cut jobs and what Trump and Musk are
trying.
In March 1993, just two
months into his presidency, Clinton announced the creation of the National
Performance Review, led by his Vice President, Al Gore. Its goal, according
to Clinton's announcement,
was "to make the entire Federal Government both less expensive and more
efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from
complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment."
The review lasted six months, and made 384
recommendations to improve the federal bureaucracy. The implementation of those
policies took a lot longer, and some required legislation to be passed through
Congress. For instance, in
1994, Clinton signed a bill that
offered federal workers buyouts of up to $25,000 in an effort to reduce the
workforce by 272,000 employees. According to an April 1995 statement
from Clinton, the buyouts were largely offered to management positions in an
effort to "reduce the layers of bureaucracy and micromanagement that
were tying Government in knots." That statement said that about 70 of the
buyouts in non-Department of Defense agencies went to managers and other
individuals "at higher grade levels."
The initiative continued to make recommendations for government reform.
According to a 1999 article on
an archived version of NPR's website, it reduced the federal workforce by
351,000 between 1993 and 1998. An archived FAQ page from
2000 said 377,000 jobs were cut between 1993 and 1999. In a 2013 appearance before
the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former National
Performance Review leader Elaine Karmarck said the agency cut 426,200 jobs by
September 2000.
But the buyouts offered by Clinton's NPR and Trump and Musk's Department
of Government Efficiency are not the same. Clinton's buyout plan had
overwhelming bipartisan support from Congress, and the law was signed after a
review period. Meanwhile, Trump and Musk offered the buyouts just one week into Trump's
term, with no review process.
Federal employee labor unions have
sued, questioning the legality of the buyout, and a federal
judge has temporarily blocked the offer in
order to review the lawsuit.
According to the
Presidential Greatness Survey, Bill Clinton is rated #12.
Obama was ranked #7, and Biden was ranked #14
Donald Trump is rated #45, and Trump #47 will be rated even lower.
I just finished
reading Trudeau’s latest book about Trump, titled “Day One Dictator”. It’s the
most recent of 38 paperbacks, including YUGE! 30 years of Doonesbury on Trump (which
I have also read).
Although 90% of
the Doonesbury comic strips are not political, he has been covering Trump since
1987 – and he saw Trump’s candidacy as early as 1999.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/garry-trudeau-doonesbury-trump-cartoon_n_57e925dbe4b0e80b1ba2ecdc
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