Not many people know it, but the “D.C.” in Washington, D.C. stands for “Du Crisis.” The District of Columbia thing is just a cover. New York City makes money, Los Angeles makes movies, Philadelphia does steak/cheese sandwiches and Houston does oil. We make — or pray for — trouble. This city is top-heavy with politicians, their horse-holders, journalists, lobbyists, lawyers and shrinks who thrive when the nation appears about to go over the cliff. Sometimes we are right. Sometimes we even do the right thing. But more often than not, the horror on the horizon fizzles before it destroys civilization as we know it.

President Donald Trump’s new budget — the so-called “skinny” version that is typical for an incoming administration — has people who don’t work for the Pentagon, as employees, contractors or suppliers, worried. It calls for a $54 billion increase in Defense spending, which would be financed by offsetting cuts in 19 non-defense agencies. The Office of Management and Budget warned that the downsizing might require reductions-in-force. The Office of Personnel Management has issued both updates and new guidance on what a RIF is and how it works.

The Washington Post said that at a briefing before the new budget was released, OMB Director  Mick Mulvaney said he expected RIFs “at some agencies … I can’t imagine how you’d take some of these reductions (proposed in the budget) and don’t have a reduction in the workforce.”

The last time Uncle Sam had RIFs of any size was during the Clinton administration. Back then, the White House ordered a reduction of about 250,000 federal jobs. It did it by offering long-time employees buyouts ($25,000 before deductions), early retirement, lots of contracting out and a hiring freeze and last-but-not-least, a limited number of RIFs. They were limited because they are messy. And expensive. If you truly want to downsize without wrecking an operation, you do not push the RIF button. If you don’t care, that is. If you hate the organization you are dealing with, RIFs can be fun in the chaos they produce.

Often during a government RIF, the last person you want to keep — the relatively high-paid 65-year-old guy who still uses an abacus instead of a laptop — is virtually fireproof. He may be a military veteran, he may have good performance ratings. When you push him out of his job, he can bump down the pay-grade ladder, displacing more recent hires with skills the government needs. But he will remain in government — and keep his current salary — once he is in the lower grade, where he may totally be a fish out of water. In other cases, if the RIF is successful, agencies have to pay severance, which can cost it a lot more in the short-term — a year or two — than it would keeping the worker. Then there are the lawsuits, union contract fights and general unrest that are time-consuming and can further erode productivity.

A former federal union national officer said: “I remember the Clinton RIFs. They were relatively small, but they were nasty. And the legal squabbling went on … for years. If you want to downsize an agency or operation, you do it with great care. If you want to wreck it, run a RIF.”

Which, come to think of it, may be the master plan!

So maybe folks in the unlucky 19 agencies due for shrinkage do have something to worry about.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

The plural for abacus is abaci or abacuses.

Source: Wikipedia

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