After 22 days of a vacant House speaker ’s chair, which was only recently filled, some may wonder who was manning the government’s policy-setting ship while this public leadership fight ensued. But the truth is, Congress ceded much of its authority long ago to the federal agencies, i.e., the administrative state.

These agencies are theoretically run by political appointees who execute the president’s agenda and, by extension, the will of the electorate . But anyone who has worked in a government agency knows senior career civil servants have an inordinate ability to sway policy and often run circles around the president’s representatives and even the president himself. This is why civil service protections and reform are so important.

Yet the Biden administration recently proposed a rule that would make federal employees even less accountable to their employers, the people. The administration seeks to protect employees who move from “competitive” service positions to “excepted” service positions, further cementing federal employees into government. The rule will make it more difficult to remove the ones who do not follow the directives of political leadership at federal agencies.

Competitive and exceptive service roles differ. Competitive process federal employees fill the more “normal” jobs within the agencies. These positions are typically less political in nature and are constant from one administration to the next. They are hired after an open competition designed to meet certain criteria under the merit system, including written material, education, and experience. They also have specified pay scales. These employees are also afforded employment protections, including the right to appeal adverse employment decisions.

Excepted service employees are hired to fill positions that have very specialized qualifications, skills, or needed trust that the competitive process does not already account for. Often, these positions are created specifically to meet an administration’s demands and needs. Mostly, excepted service employees do not have the same standardized employment screening process. As a trade-off, they also do not have the same protections against adverse employment decisions.

The Trump administration sought to reform the bureaucracy and make it more responsive to the president’s agenda and, by extension, the will of the people. The former president promulgated an executive order creating the Schedule F classification of federal employees, which removed civil service protections for federal employees who have some influence over policy. This gave the agencies more flexibility in hiring and removing employees so that those who influence policy have the “appropriate temperament, acumen, impartiality, and sound judgment.”

Unfortunately, one of the Biden administration’s first acts was to undo Schedule F.

In fact, the Biden administration is now running in the other direction, proactively granting civil service protections to employees who have left competitive service positions for excepted service positions. Worse, Biden’s new rule would actively afford more protection for those who have influence over policy by carving out only those who are hired as “confidential, policy determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating” employees from civil service protections. This means that the many excepted service employees who influence policy, but are not directly hired for that purpose, would be much harder to remove from their positions.

This is a dangerous move for the Biden administration. Employees who are underperforming, particularly those civil servants who have an impact on the direction of an agency’s policy, should not be difficult to remove.

Congress has given policymakers at agencies, career civil servants included, remarkable power. To demand that bureaucrats exercise this responsibility judiciously and effectively is hardly unreasonable or extreme. The president’s agenda, no matter how contrary to career civil servants’ ideology or worldview it might be, should be the measuring stick to which career civil servants are held. This is the only way representative democracy can survive an increasingly absent Congress.

Curtis Schube is the executive director of the Council to Modernize Governance, a think tank committed to making the administration of government more efficient, representative, and restrained.