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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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Do you anticipate large scale (50%+) reductions across most agencies,

Not really, no.

Reduction in force applicable consistent with applicable law runs into the point that applicable law is what authorizes and appropriates for those work forces. Moreover, the OPM memo makes some, hm, substantial carve outs.

VI. Exclusions Nothing in this memorandum shall have any application to:

  1. Positions that are necessary to meet law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities;
  2. Military personnel in the armed forces and all Federal uniformed personnel, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Commissioned Officer Corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; ...
  3. The U.S. Postal Service. Finally, agencies or components that provide direct services to citizens (such as Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ health care) shall not implement any proposed ARRPs until OMB and OPM certify that the plans will have a positive effect on the delivery of such services.

So if you're not even touching the Department of Defense (which according to google has about 1/3rd of the non-military government labor force, or 30%) and you're not touching the postal service (one fifth, or 20%), in just two carve outs you've already exempted over 50% of the government's non-military employee base. And on top of that, if the analysis of the welfare state cuts is that cutting hurts, don't.

There is an expression that when you look in terms of overall budget, the US is either a welfare state with the world's biggest military, or a military with a welfare state. The welfare state is the dominant part of the budget by far, and most of that spending is automatic based on eligibility and not discretionary spending. Of the discretionary spending, about half is on defense.

and how does this square with the proposed budget that will apparently add trillions in debt? What am I missing?

Trump is not a fiscal conservative.

Trump is in an alliance with fiscal conservatives, who believe that cutting the scale government is key to reducing / reigning in government spending. In turn, these fiscal conservatives don't believe that the military should be cut, but tend to believe the better way to control military spending is to avoid various conflicts (like Ukraine support).

There is a confluence of interests in that Trump wants to cut the government because he views it as a basis of resistance (because the Democrats loudly boasted of the fact last time around), and the fiscal conservatives see it as an opportunity to cut back the regulatory state (which includes advocating for / overseeing constant expansions of entitlemet spending).

I'm most interested in how all this shakes out politically. You can fire all these people, but when these salaries amount to a tiny fraction of the budget and is an easily exploited issue for your enemies (e.g., firing veterans and people close to retirement never looks good),

This is why the framing has been 'efficiency' and 'waste' rather than the people executing them per see. USAID was publicized in the way it was because it was an easy scalp with a number of silly things to point at. Discussing the waste in turn distracts from who was administrating those actions.

This is also why OPM's memo talks in terms of 'redundancies' and 'low performers.' If a veteran is fired because they were a bad worker, the political salience is lost if it turns into some form of 'bad worker says he shouldn't be fired because he's a veteran.'

and there isn't much progress in reducing consumer prices,

None of these parts are about consumer prices, which themselves have a politically priced-in expectation of rising due to the trade barrier disputes.

Setting aside the end of some artificially low prices that were pursued last year for domestic political advantage (such as the Biden administration cutting off LNG exports in 2024, which forced the gas to be sold domestically for cheaper domestic industry and all that matters), Trump's base generally has priced in that trade disputes mean short-term issues for longer-term improvements.

The less politically engaged may not, but that won't matter as much for another two years.

you'd think the House and Senate could easily flip in two years.

Again, priced in.

Which is why Trump and Musk and such are going in quick and hard. They have probably built in the assumption they won't be able to make such cuts later. Trump is a lame duck president regardless, and you should generally expect the governing part to lose their trifecta quickly.

I endorse Monzer's interpretation that a fair bit of the recent discord is basically just a smoke screen / distraction at some proposals to cut more politically popular things which amount to larger fractions of the budget.