‘No effort to work with Congress’: Park University Professor weighs Trump’s push to shrink workforce
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) — President Donald Trump continues his effort to shrink the federal workforce with an estimated 30,000 already out of a job. One Park University Political Science Professor said the process is concerning compared to past istrations.
In date from the Pew Research Center, it shows at the end of President Joe Biden’s term in 2024, 3.02 million people worked for the federal government, that was a 4.8% increase during his term. For President Trump’s first term, in 2020 there were 2.89 million workers, a 2.6% increase for his first time as President.
With thousands more layoffs expected, KCTV5 spoke with Park University Associate Professor of Political Science Dr. Matt Harris about these layoffs and how Trump is going about it.
Dr. Harris said it is normal for a new istration to come in and make changes such as layoffs.
“I think what is unusual and frankly concerning is the way that the Trump istration is going about this,” said Park University Associate Professor of Political Science, Dr. Matt Harris.
He said former President Bill Clinton tried to do something similar in the nineties: shrink the Government’s workforce.
“The Clinton istration’s effort in the nineties was done with Congress they were working with Congress to figure out okay how can we make Government more efficient, where are some places where we don’t need this many people, they brought in the stakeholders in Government to figure out okay how can we be more efficient,” said Dr. Harris.
But, this time around he said Trump isn’t doing it how Clinton did.
“Really the unprecedented piece is there is really no effort to work with Congress this is sort of unilateral from the Executive,” said Dr. Harris. He added, “That doesn’t seem to be the best way to go about making Government more efficient, it just seems to be let’s just fire a bunch of people randomly and you can see that based on their own actions, a few days ago they fired a bunch of people at the USDA who were working on Bird Flu and they said oh we didn’t mean to do that. So I think there are some real concerns about the way they are going about this.”
The firings, recent email by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk’s involvement, and recent resignations by more than 20 DOGE employees are more reasons for concern, according to Dr. Harris.
“This effort seems to be Elon Musk, who if you read his tweets does not seem to know very much about how Government works, does not seem to have much respect for the idea of three coequal branches of Government,” said Dr. Harris. He added, “There are questions about who is directing this, who is in charge, questions about the role of Congress, and Musk himself also seems to be pretty disdainful of an independent judiciary.”
He said there are constitutional questions regarding these changes as well.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not directly answer to reporters who the DOGE is, adding he is there to ‘oversee the DOGE effort’.
“The American people elected Donald Trump they didn’t elect Elon Musk,” said Dr. Harris. When discussing the email by Musk he said, “Elon Musk is not their boss, there is a chain of command, there are director supervisors, some of these evaluation pieces are things that the Clinton istration worked on in the nineties.”
He expects more court challenges to come up with these layoffs.
“When we are in unprecedented times that is when we tend to get these Supreme Court cases that tell us stuff about what the Supreme Court thinks the role of the Executive is we saw it with Nixon we saw it will Clinton, and I would suspect we will see it with Trump as well,” said Dr. Harris. He added, “What we haven’t seen is any sort of coherence in of the White House and the Executive itself but also you know Republicans control the House and the Senate what is their role in of a comprehensive plan for trying to reduce waste, and inefficient, and reduce the national debt if that is their goal.”
Dr. Harris anticipates more people will start to notice issues if the layoffs affect Government services that are directly used by the population.
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