Heather Lofthouse and Robert Reich touched on something in their Saturday Coffee Klatch today that I had missed at the time.
Back in February Elon
Musk compared DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency that he leads, to Clinton’s
program to reduce federal government expense and increase efficiency in the
1990s. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time that Trump’s
administration is doing what “Democrat
politicians promised the American people they would do for decades.”
The first part of Clinton’s
program, called the National Performance Review (NPR) was headed by vice
president Al Gore. The stated goal was “to
make the entire federal government less expensive and more efficient, and to
change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and
entitlement toward initiative and empowerment.” After 6 months of consultation
with government departments NPR released a 2,000 page report in September with
384 recommendations.
The name of the program
was then changed to National Partnership for Reinventing Government (still NPR)
and their task changed from “review and
recommend” to “support agencies in
their reinventing goals”. By the end of his term Clinton had reduced the
federal workforce by 377,000 which occurred over several years and with the cooperation
of Congress.
Reich was involved in
that program as the Secretary of Labor under Clinton and explained the
difference between what they did then and what DOGE is doing now.
Reich explained their
goal was to cut unnecessary expenditures without harming people, including
the civil service. In his Department of Labor they went from about 16,000 to 11,000
without laying anyone off. “It was done in
a way to minimize damage to human beings. That’s what efficiency is all about –
do as much good as you were doing before and don’t do any bad. And that’s the
big contrast with what Elon Musk and Trump are doing.”
DOGE by contrast has
fired over 121,000 workers in the first 100 days, with little or no consultation
with the departments involved. The firings are random with no consideration
given to how the agencies were to continue to fulfil their duties. For example the
Department of Veterans Affairs had 70,000 (15%) of their workforce fired and
many field offices closed. This will make it much harder for veterans to apply
for and obtain needed services.
The total federal positions cut by May 5 was calculated at 282,900. This is getting close to what Clinton administration did over 3-4 years.
Reich then explained the
philosophy behind the lack of empathy for both the fired workers and the public
deprived of services. Social Darwinism teaches that the strong should increase
in power and wealth and the weak should decrease. This philosophy is behind
most of the Trump regime’s policies and actions.
UPDATE
Derek Beres writing for the Guardian May 4 expanded on the theory of Social Darwinism calling it "soft eugenics" which lies behind many of Trump's policies.
At the heart of all these policies is soft eugenics thinking – the idea that if you take away life-saving healthcare and services from the vulnerable, then you can let nature take its course and only the strong will survive.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/04/maga-soft-eugenics
Sources:
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/where-will-we-go-from-here-the-coffee
[25:10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinventing_Government
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/28/us/politics/trump-doge-federal-job-cuts.html
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