AMAC Newsline columnist Andrew Shirley pointed out an interesting bit of forgotten history about Bill Clinton’s reduction of the federal workforce. It seems Bill Clinton made even more extreme cuts to the federal workforce during his second term in office than has the Trump/Musk DOGE team. This history has apparently been conveniently forgotten, or purposely buried, by the mainstream media so they can continually blast anyone and everyone connected with DOGE like it’s causing an end of the world disaster.
I was a federal employee in a supervisory position within the Defense Logistics Agency at the time Clinton made these cuts and only vaguely recall a slight increase in employee buyouts, and I don’t recall any nationwide panic. However, I do recall that his cuts to our acquisition budget caused the agency to carry fewer parts in the wholesale inventory which did not cause an immediate impact to aircraft readiness, but due to long acquisition lead times for the aircraft parts that my business unit managed there was a downstream impact that inconveniently came later, about the time the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened. By then it was President Bush’s problem to solve.
Of major significance to what is happening today, the author of the referenced article noted that the strategy Clinton used to cut the federal workforce was almost identical to what DOGE is doing with one major difference. Clinton did not focus on exposing the blatant internal corruption, money laundering and other shenanigans going on behind the scenes that the DOGE boys are uncovering. Following is a good summary of the Clinton cost cutting strategy (emphasis is mine):
In his 1996 State of the Union Address, he [Clinton] proclaimed, ‘The era of big government is over.’ In 1993, he launched the National Performance Review, aimed at shrinking the federal bureaucracy. It envisioned the government as a company and American citizens as customers.
As a result, 377,000 jobs were eliminated from the federal workforce. This shrank the government to its smallest size since the 1960s. Under pressure from congressional Republicans, who won back the House in 1994 following former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s famous ‘Contract with America’ campaign, Clinton also cut $137 billion from the federal budget, equivalent to roughly $330 billion today. As a result, the country had budget surpluses for fiscal years 1998-2001.
The strategies Clinton employed to implement these cuts were strikingly similar to those employed by DOGE. Federal employees are notoriously difficult to fire, even with cause. Thus, Clinton offered large buyouts and generous severance packages for career employees and made common-sense cuts to probationary employees – both methods DOGE has relied on.
Based on this rediscovered information it certainly looks like there is a double standard being used by the Dems and their media lackeys to disparage all the savings and good DOGE has accomplished so far.
