President-elect Trump’s forthcoming government efficiency commission is hoping to institute large-scale layoffs of federal employees and force civil servants to work in their offices five days per week, according to one of the business executives Trump has tapped to lead it. The Department of Government Efficiency—a non-government panel that Trump has vowed to stand up—will be able to move swiftly to implement the changes without congressional approval, Vivek Ramaswamy told Fox News on Sunday, saying the president-elect can act through executive action. The entrepreneur and former presidential candidate added that recent Supreme Court precedent and its conservative makeup would provide legal backing to the ideas he and his co-lead, Elon Musk, will put forward. “We expect mass reductions,” Ramaswamy said. “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright. We expect mass reductions-in-force in areas of the federal government that are bloated.”
Ramaswamy suggested without those authorities to interpret and enforce federal law, the Trump administration would have the grounds to eliminate federal jobs en masse. He also said the administration would be making significant cuts to federal contracting. “If we don’t downsize the federal government now, it’s never going to happen in the future as well,” he said, referring to the six-three conservative majority on the high court. “So this is a historic opportunity. We’re not actually going to squander this.”He added that reductions to telework and relocating agencies would help motivate employees to leave government voluntarily. He called it a “dirty little secret” that most federal workers “don’t even show up to work.”
About 80% of the federal work hours are currently spent in-person, according to a recent Office of Management and Budget review, and more than half of federal employees do not telework at all because their jobs are not conducive to it. Of those who do telework, employees on average spent about three-fifths of their time on site. “If you require most of those federal bureaucrats to just say, like normal working Americans, you come to work five days a week, a lot of them won’t want to do that,” Ramaswamy said. “If you have many voluntary reductions in force of the workforce in the federal government along the way, great. That’s a good side effect of those policies as well.”
There is no way it can happen,” he said, adding it would create enormous political resistance given the basic and necessary government functions that would no longer occur. Ramaswamy conceded that some parts of his plan would require congressional action and Trump would tackle those later in the process. By citing the deregulatory action that may take place under Trump and the new Supreme Court precedents, Ramaswamy may be trying to create a “lack of work” argument to justify mass layoffs. The deregulatory process is typically quite lengthy, however, and often subject to significant legal scrutiny.Trump has also promised to bring back his Schedule F initiative that would end the merit-based civil service for untold portions of the federal workforce, instead making them subject to politicized at-will firings. The Biden administration has finalized regulations aimed at preventing something like Schedule F from taking effect, perhaps slowing down Trump’s efforts.
Trump has also promised to bring back his Schedule F initiative that would end the merit-based civil service for untold portions of the federal workforce, instead making them subject to politicized at-will firings. The Biden administration has finalized regulations aimed at preventing something like Schedule F from taking effect, perhaps slowing down Trump’s efforts. As an outside entity, the Musk and Ramaswamy-led DOGE will make recommendations for executive action rather than carrying any enforcement mechanism itself. Trump has said it will issue reports along the way, with one large product due by July 4, 2026. He also suggested the commission would work closely with OMB on its suggestions. Ramaswamy said his commission would attempt to carry out the layoffs with compassion. “Our goal is not to be cruel, by the way, to the individual federal employees,” he said. “Most of them, I do want to say this, are individually good people, and we want to be compassionate and generous in how we handle this transition. But the real issue is there’s just too many of them.”
Our goal is not to be cruel, by the way, to the individual federal employees,” he said. “Most of them, I do want to say this, are individually good people, and we want to be compassionate and generous in how we handle this transition. But the real issue is there’s just too many of them.”He added the nation should not have 4 million civil servants who are unelected and not held accountable, though there are currently only about 2.1 million federal employees (the U.S. Postal Service employs an additional roughly 600,000 individuals).In his first term, Trump spearheaded a government reorganization initiative that led to dozens of agency restructuring proposals. Most of those ideas were either abandoned or never taken up, however. Overall, Trump oversaw a small growth in the federal workforce during his presidency, though most agencies did shed workers. His budget proposals to dramatically slash domestic spending and eliminate some small agencies were largely ignored by Congress.The Trump transition team did not respond to an inquiry on Ramaswamy’s comments or DOGE’s plans.
