Successive presidents, including President Donald Trump, have made it policy to improve the service citizens get from the federal government. But with all of the reductions in the federal workforce going on, American University professor emeritus Bob Tobias says it threatens service. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And customer service is owned by an administration. And you’re saying that with all these reductions in people, a lot of things could suffer and President Trump better be prepared to own that, too.

Bob Tobias: Yes, Tom, I think President Trump, for the first time of any president, including him in his first term, has declared himself the CEO of the executive branch. And so he’s put on his shoulders the responsibility, which I believe is the responsibility of every president, to increase service to the public. And if he’s the CEO, he gets the blame if that service declines or stays the same, it’s on him. He can’t put it on anybody else’s shoulders. So I think it’s a good thing that he’s declared himself the CEO of the executive branch. And like most CEOs, he’s got a plan. And I think currently, there are three elements of that plan that have emerged. And the first is he wants to have loyalists in important government positions and he’s gotten that. Every single person he’s nominated, the Senate has confirmed. So he cannot say later on, ‘I’ve got blockers. I’ve got people in the way who aren’t implementing my policies.’ He has his people in place. Now, the second element of this plan is to reduce the federal workforce by 15 to 20%, or 330 to 440,000 people. And, Tom, it seems to me that’s kind of an arbitrary number because there was no analysis done of federal programs which were efficient, which were ineffective or so forth. So I think it’s kind of an arbitrary number. And he seems to be assuming that a reduced federal workforce by 15 to 20%, that those remain will pick up the slack in a way to maintain or improve public service. And I find that hard to believe, Tom. I mean, if I’m an SSA employee and I’m answering the phones, there going to be fewer people answering the phones and the wait time is going to be longer or if I’m Patent and Trademark examiner and there are fewer of us, it’s going to take the public longer to get approval. And if I’m waiting for a drug from the FDA to get approved, it’s going to take longer to have that happen. So I don’t know about this picking up the slack business.

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Tom Temin: Right. Let’s pick a case in point, especially the IRS and agencies, that seems to be particularly sensitive to staffing levels when it comes to customer experience, and they were really bad for a few years, and then some money came outside of normal appropriations. They hired people. The telephone wait times went down, collections went up. And you’ve looked at that one pretty closely.

Bob Tobias: Yes, Tom. And the fact is that in 2023, the taxpayer wait times for the customer service representatives to answer the phone, 10% of the calls were answered. They hired 5,000 people. And in 2024, it went to 87% and they hired auditors and started auditing returns and collected $100 billion. So now the people who are answering the phones are immune from this reduction that the president is imposing across the board. But all those who are doing the audits, man, they’re gone. So instead of increasing revenue, there’s going to be decreased revenue in the future. This is an agency that’s performing incredibly well and could use more employees, but it’s being reduced. And I also think, Tom, that this reduction approach of focusing on probationary employees, it’s going to be counterproductive. If your goal is solely to reduce the workforce, it works. But if your goal is both short term and long term, you’re not going to be able to hire Gen Z workers to fill vacancies in the future. The federal government has a workforce of 2% of Gen Zs whereas the private sector has 18%.

Tom Temin: We are speaking with Bob Tobias, professor emeritus at American University and former president of the NTEU. So the reductions are coming. I think their answer would be, ‘Well, we’ll just replace people with artificial intelligence and automated systems.’ That hasn’t always worked out so well, though, has it?

Bob Tobias: Well, it hasn’t always worked so well. But if I were really thinking through this, I would wait until I had effective artificial intelligence put into the work processes. It’s not there now. So with this reduction is going on now, not later, not six months, not a year later when maybe artificial intelligence and increased technology will do more work. But now.

Tom Temin: Right. And the bigger question, I think, Bob, is that again, this is, I know one of your themes, is that if the government is perceived to be a crummy employer, and it was perceived that way at some point in history, in recent years, there’s been a lot of upgrading of work facilities and the way federal employees are treated, if they’re perceived as at will or come and go or you’re probably lazy because you’re in public service, that’s going to hamper the government long term.

Bob Tobias: It is, Tom. I mean, consider all of these probationary employees who went through the vetting process and got their clearances, and some of them are in their last month, the 11th month of their probationary period, and they gave up other offers and now they’re told, you’re done, do you think they’ll ever apply for a federal government job in the future or that they’ll recommend government service to their friends or relatives or colleagues who graduated with them? They won’t and it’ll be much more difficult in the future to hire the lifeblood of the future of public service, which is college graduates.

Tom Temin: All right. So what is a better approach, in your view, to getting that efficiency that the government says it wants or that the administration says it wants? They even have a Department of Government Efficiency, so to speak.

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Bob Tobias: Well, Tom, I think that if you really want to increase service to the public, which is what I think a president’s goal should be, it’s hard work. It takes time. It takes analysis. It takes creating goals and objectives. It requires creating new plans to achieve those goals and objectives. It requires close coordination between the CEO, OMB and agency heads, and I think it takes much more than what we saw last week when Mr. Musk sent out a message to 2.2 million federal employees and said, ‘What have you done last week? What are the five bullet points of things you have done last week?’ Apparently as a measure to see if the reduced number of employees has had an impact on public service. And so he expects 2.2 million people to send a message. But I think, Tom, that even with artificial intelligence, he’s not going to be able to link their answers to whether or not public service has been increased or decreased. And my belief is that a reduced federal workforce is going to produce less public service and that will be on the president.

Tom Temin: Yes. And on that point of artificial intelligence, it’s only good if there’s human intelligence actually pushing the artificial intelligence.

Bob Tobias: Well that’s true. We’re not totally robotic yet, Tom, so we have to have a little bit of human intelligence to link what people are reporting to their goals and objectives, to agency goals and objectives, and make a determination of whether or not their work is relevant to increase public service, which, after all, is supposed to be the goal of this effort.

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