3CENTRAL PERSONNEL AGENCIES:
MANAGING THE BUREAUCRACY
Donald Devine,
Dennis Dean Kirk,
and Paul DansOVERVIEW

From the very first Mandate for Leadership, the “personnel is policy” theme has been
the fundamental principle guiding the government’s personnel management. As the U.S.
Constitution makes clear, the President’s appointment, direction, and removal authorities are the central elements of his executive power.1 In implementing that power, thepeople and the President deserve the most talented and responsible workforce possible.
Who the President assigns to design and implement his political policy agenda
will determine whether he can carry out the responsibility given to him by theAmerican people. The President must recognize that whoever holds a government
position sets its policy. To fulfill an electoral mandate, he must therefore give personnel management his highest priority, including Cabinet-level precedence.
The federal government’s immense bureaucracy spreads into hundreds of agencies and thousands of units and is centered and overseen at the top by key central
personnel agencies and their governing laws and regulations. The major separate
personnel agencies in the national government today are:l

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM);l

The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB);l

The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA); andl

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC).

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Title 5 of the U.S. Code charges the OPM with executing, administering, andenforcing the rules, regulations, and laws governing the civil service.2 It grants theOPM direct responsibility for activities like retirement, pay, health, training, federal
unionization, suitability, and classification functions not specifically granted to otheragencies by statute. The agency’s Director is charged with aiding the President, as
the President may request, in preparing such civil service rules as the President prescribes and otherwise advising the President on actions that may be taken to promote
an efficient civil service and a systematic application of the merit system principles,
including recommending policies relating to the selection, promotion, transfer, performance, pay, conditions of service, tenure, and separation of employees.
The MSPB is the lead adjudicator for hearing and resolving cases and controversies for 2.2 million federal employees.3 It is required to conduct fair and neutralcase adjudications, regulatory reviews, and actions and studies to improve theworkforce. Its court-like adjudications investigate and hear appeals from agency
actions such as furloughs, suspensions, demotions, and terminations and areappealable to the U.S. Court of Appeals.
The FLRA hears appeals of agency personnel cases involving federal labor grievance procedures to provide judicial review with binding decisions appealable toappeals courts.4 It interprets the rights and duties of agencies and employee labororganizations—on management rights, OPM interpretations, recognition of labororganizations, and unfair labor practices—under the general principle of bargaining in good faith and compelling need.
The OSC serves as the investigator, mediator, publisher, and prosecutor before
the MSPB with respect to agency and employees regarding prohibited personnel practices, Hatch Act5 politicization, Uniformed Services Employment andReemployment Rights Act6 issues, and whistleblower complaints.7
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has general responsibility for reviewing charges of employee discrimination against all civil rights
breaches. However, it also administers a government employee section that investigates and adjudicates federal employee complaints concerning equal employment
violations as with the private sector.8 This makes the agency an additional de facto
factor in government personnel management.
While not a personnel agency per se, the General Services Administration (GSA)
is charged with general supervision of contracting.9 Today, there are many more
contractors in government than there are civil service employees. The GSA must
therefore be a part of any personnel management discussion.
ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONSOPM: Managing the Federal Bureaucracy. At the very pinnacle of themodern progressive program to make government competent stands the idealof professionalized, career civil service. Since the turn of the 20th century,— 70 —

2025 Presidential Transition Projectprogressives have sought a system that could effectively select, train, reward,
and guard from partisan influence the neutral scientific experts they believe are
required to staff the national government and run the administrative state. Their
U.S. system was initiated by the Pendleton Act of 188310 and institutionalized by
the 1930s New Deal to set principles and practices that were meant to ensure thatexpert merit rather than partisan favors or personal favoritism ruled within thefederal bureaucracy. Yet, as public frustration with the civil service has grown,
generating calls to “drain the swamp,” it has become clear that their project has
had serious unintended consequences.
The civil service was devised to replace the amateurism and presumed corruption of the old spoils system, wherein government jobs rewarded loyal partisans
who might or might not have professional backgrounds. Although the systemappeared to be sufficient for the nation’s first century, progressive intellectuals
and activists demanded a more professionalized, scientific, and politically neutral
Administration. Progressives designed a merit system to promote expertise andshield bureaucrats from partisan political pressure, but it soon began to insulate
civil servants from accountability. The modern merit system increasingly made it
almost impossible to fire all but the most incompetent civil servants. Complying
with arcane rules regarding recruiting, rating, hiring, and firing simply replaced
the goal of cultivating competence and expertise.
In the 1970s, Georgia Democratic Governor Jimmy Carter, then a politicalunknown, ran for President supporting New Deal programs and their Great Society expansion but opposing the way they were being administered. The policies
were not actually reducing poverty, increasing prosperity, or improving the environment, he argued, and to make them work required fundamental bureaucratic
reform. He correctly charged that almost all government employees were rated
as “successful,” all received the same pay regardless of performance, and even theworst were impossible to fire—and he won the presidency.
President Carter fulfilled his campaign promise by hiring Syracuse University
Dean Alan Campbell, who served first as Chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission and then as Director of the OPM and helped him devise and pass the Civil
Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA)11 to reset the basic structure of today’s bureaucracy. A new performance appraisal system was devised with a five rather than
three distribution of rating categories and individual goals more related to agency
missions and more related to employee promotion for all. Pay and benefits werebased directly on improved performance appraisals (including sizable bonuses) for
mid-level managers and senior executives. But time ran out on President Carter
before the act could be fully executed, so it was left to President Ronald Reagan
and his new OPM and agency leadership to implement.
Overall, the new law seemed to work for a few years under Reagan, but the Carter–
Reagan reforms were dissipated within a decade. Today, employee evaluation is back— 71 —

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to pre-reform levels with almost all rated successful or above, frustrating any relation between pay and performance. An “outstanding” rating should be required for
Senior Executive Service (SES) chiefs to win big bonuses, but a few years ago, when
it was disclosed that the Veterans Administration executives who encouraged false
reporting of waiting lists for hospital admission were rated outstanding, the Senior
Executive Association justified it, telling Congress that only outstanding performers
would be promoted to the SES in the first place and that precise ratings were unnecessary.12 The Government Accountability Office (GAO), however, has reported thatpay raises, within-grade pay increases, and locality pay for regular employees andexecutives have become automatic rather than based on performance—as a resultof most employees being rated at similar appraisal levels.13
OPM: Merit Hiring in a Merit System. It should not be impossible evenfor a large national government to hire good people through merit selection. The
government did so for years, but it has proven difficult in recent times to selectpersonnel based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) as the law dictates.
Yet for the past 34 years, the U.S. civil service has been unable to distinguish consistently between strong and unqualified applicants for employment.
As the Carter presidency was winding down, the U.S. Department of Justiceand top lawyers at the OPM contrived with plaintiffs to end civil service IQ examinations because of concern about their possible impact on minorities. The OPM
had used the Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE) general intelligence exam to select college graduates for top agency employment, but
Carter Administration officials—probably without the President’s informed concurrence—abolished the PACE through a legal consent court decree capitulating
to demands by civil rights petitioners who contended that it was discriminatory.
The judicial decree was to last only five years but still controls federal hiring andis applied to all KSA tests even today.
General ability tests like the PACE have been used successfully to assess the usefulness and cost-effectiveness of broad intellectual qualities across many separate
occupations. Courts have ruled that even without evidence of overt, intentional
discrimination, such results might suggest discrimination. This doctrine of disparate impact could be ended legislatively or at least narrowed through the regulatory
process by a future Administration. In any event, the federal government has beendenied the use of a rigorous entry examination for three decades, relying insteadon self-evaluations that have forced managers to resort to subterfuge such aspreselecting friends or associates that they believe are competent to obtain qualified employees.
In 2015, President Barack Obama’s OPM began to introduce an improved merit
examination called USAHire, which it had been testing quietly since 2012 in a few
agencies for a dozen job descriptions. The tests had multiple-choice questions with
only one correct answer. Some questions even required essay replies: questions— 72 —

2025 Presidential Transition Projectthat would change regularly to depress cheating. President Donald Trump’s OPM
planned to implement such changes but was delayed because of legal concerns
over possible disparate impact.
Courts have agreed to review the consent decree if the Uniform Guidelines
on Employee Selection Procedures setting the technical requirements for soundexams are reformed. A government that is unable to select employees based on
KSA-like test qualifications cannot work, and the OPM must move forward on thisvery basic personnel management obligation.
The Centrality of Performance Appraisal. In the meantime, the OPM must
manage the workforce it has. Before they can reward or discipline federal employees,
managers must first identify who their top performers are and who is performing
less than adequately. In fact, as Ludwig von Mises proved in his classic Bureaucracy,14
unlike the profit-and-loss evaluation tool used in the private sector, government
performance measurement depends totally on a functioning appraisal system. Ifthey cannot be identified in the first place within a functioning appraisal system, it is
impossible to reward good performance or correct poor performance. The problem
is that the collegial atmosphere of a bureaucracy in a multifaceted appraisal systemthat is open to appeals makes this a very challenging ideal to implement successfully.
The GAO reported more recently that overly high and widely spread performance ratings were again plaguing the government, with more than 99 percent of
employees rated fully successful or above by their managers, a mere 0.3 percent
rated as minimally successful, and 0.1 percent actually rated unacceptable.15 Why?
It is human nature that no one appreciates being told that he or she is less thanoutstanding in every way. Informing subordinates in a closely knit bureaucracythat they are not performing well is difficult. Rating compatriots is even considered rude and unprofessional. Moreover, managers can be and often are accusedof racial or sexual discrimination for a poor rating, and this discourages honesty.
In 2018, President Trump issued Executive Order 1383916 requiring agencies to reduce the time for employees to improve performance before corrective
action could be taken; to initiate disciplinary actions against poorly performing
employees more expeditiously; to reiterate that agencies are obligated to makeemployees improve; to reduce the time for employees to respond to allegationsof poor performance; to mandate that agencies remind supervisors of expiring
employee probationary periods; to prohibit agencies from entering into settlementagreements that modify an employee’s personnel record; and to reevaluate procedures for agencies to discipline supervisors who retaliate against whistleblowers.
Unfortunately, the order was overturned by the Biden Administration,17 so it willneed to be reintroduced in 2025.
The fact remains that meaningfully evaluating employees’ performance is a
critical part of a manager’s job. In the Reagan appraisal process, managers were
evaluated on how they themselves rated their subordinates. This is critical to— 73 —

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responsibility and improved management. It is essential that political executives
build policy goals directly into employee appraisals both for mission success andfor employees to know what is expected. Indistinguishable from their coworkers
on paper, hard-working federal employees often go unrewarded for their efforts
and are often the system’s greatest critics. Federal workers who are performing
inadequately get neither the benefit of an honest appraisal nor clear guidance on
how to improve. Political executives should take an active role in supervising performance appraisals of career staff, not unduly delegate this responsibility to senior
career managers, and be willing to reward and support good performers.
Merit Pay. Performance appraisal means little to daily operations if it is not tied
directly to real consequences for success as well as failure. According to a survey ofmajor U.S. private companies—which, unlike the federal government, also have aprofit-and-loss evaluation—90 percent use a system of merit pay for performancebased on some type of appraisal system. Despite early efforts to institute merit pay
throughout the federal government, however, compensation is still based primarily
on seniority rather than merit.
Merit pay for executives and managers was part of the Carter reforms and was
implemented early in the Reagan presidency. Beginning in the summer of 1982,
the Reagan OPM entered 18 months of negotiations with House and Senate staff
on extending merit pay to the entire workforce. Long and detailed talks between
the OPM and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress ensued, and a final
agreement was reached in 1983 that supposedly ensured the passage of legislation
creating a new Performance Management and Recognition System (PMRS) for all,(not just management) GS-13 through GS-15 employees.
Meanwhile, the OPM issued regulations to expand the role of performance
related to pay throughout the entire workforce, but congressional allies of theemployee unions, led by Representative Steny Hoyer (D) of government employee–rich Maryland, stoutly resisted this extension of pay-for-performance and, withstrong union support, used the congressional appropriations process to block OPM
administrative pay reforms. Bonuses for SES career employees survived, but performance appraisals became so high and widely distributed that there was little
relationship between performance and remuneration.
Ever since the original merit pay system for federal managers (GM-13 through
GM-15 grade levels, just below the SES) was allowed to expire in September 1993,
little to nothing has been done either to reinstate the federal merit pay program for
managers or to distribute performance rating evaluations for the SES, much less toextend the program to the remainder of the workforce. A reform-friendly President
and Congress might just provide the opportunity to create a more comprehensive
performance plan; in the meantime, however, political executives should use existing pay and especially fiscal awards strategically to reward good performance tothe degree allowed by law.

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Making the Appeals Process Work. The nonmilitary government dismissal
rate is well below 1 percent, and no private-sector industry employee enjoys thejob security that a federal employee enjoys. Both safety and justice demand thatmanagers learn to act strategically to hire good and fire poor performers legally.
The initial paperwork required to separate poor or abusive performers (when they
are infrequently identified) is not overwhelming, and managers might be motivatedto act if it were not for the appeals and enforcement processes. Formal appeal in theprivate sector is mostly a rather simple two-step process, but government unions
and associations have been able to convince politicians to support a multiple andextensive appeals and enforcement process.
As noted, there are multiple administrative appeals bodies. The FLRA, OSC,
and EEOC have relatively narrow jurisdictions. Claims that an employee’s removal
or disciplinary actions violate the terms of a collective bargaining agreement
between an agency and a union are handled by the FLRA, employees who claim
their removal was the result of discrimination can appeal to the EEOC, and employees who believe their firing was retribution for being a whistleblower can go to the
OSC. While the MSPB specializes in abuses of direct merit system issues, it canand does hear and review almost any of the matters heard by the other agencies.
Cases involving race, gender, religion, age, pregnancy, disability, or national
origin can be appealed to the EEOC or the MSPB—and in some cases to both—andto the OSC. This gives employees multiple opportunities to prove their cases, andwhile the EEOC, MSPB, FLRA, and OSC may all apply essentially the same burdenof proof, the odds of success may be substantially different in each forum. In fact,
forum shopping among them for a friendlier venue is a common practice, but frequent filers face no consequences for frivolous complaints. As a result, meritorious
cases are frequently delayed, denying relief and justice to truly aggrieved individuals.
The MSPB can and does handle all such matters, but it faces a backlog of an
estimated 3,000 cases of people who were potentially wrongfully terminated or
disciplined as far back as 2013. From 2017–2022 the MSPB lacked the quorum
required to decide appeals. On the other hand, as of January 2023, the EEOC had
a backlog of 42,000 cases.
While federal employees win appeals relatively infrequently—MSPB administrative judges have upheld agency decisions as much as 80 percent of the time—thereal problem is the time and paperwork involved in the elaborate process thatmanagers must undergo during appeals. This keeps even the best managers frombringing cases in all but the most egregious cases of poor performance or misconduct. As a result, the MSPB, EEOC, FLRA, and OSC likely see very few cases
compared to the number of occurrences, and nonperformers continue to be paid
and often are placed in nonwork positions.
Having a choice of appeals is especially unique to the government. If lower-priority issues were addressed in-house, serious adverse actions would be less subject— 75 —

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to delay. With the proper limitation of labor union actions, the FLRA shouldhave limited reason for appeals. The EEOC’s federal employee section should betransferred to the MSPB, and many of the OCS’s investigatory functions should be
returned to the OPM. The MSPB could then become the main reviewer of adverse
actions, greatly simplifying the burdensome appeal process.
Making Civil Service Benefits Economically and Administratively Rational. In recent years, the combined wages and benefits of the executive branchcivilian workforce totaled $300 billion according to official data. But even thatamount does not properly account for billions in unfunded liability for retirement
and other government reporting distortions. Official data also report employment
as approximately 2 million, but this ignores approximately 20 million contractors
who, while not eligible for government pay and benefits, do receive them indirectly
through contracting (even if they are less generous). Official data also claim thatnational government employees are paid less than private-sector employees arepaid for similar work, but several more neutral sources demonstrate that public-sector workers make more on average than their private-sector counterparts.
All of this extravagance deserves close scrutiny.
Market-Based Pay and Benefits. According to current law, federal workers
are to be paid wages comparable to equivalent private-sector workers rather thancompared to all private-sector employees. While the official studies claim thatfederal employees are underpaid relative to the private sector by 20 percent or
more, a 2016 Heritage Foundation study found that federal employees received
wages that were 22 percent higher than wages for similar private-sector workers;
if the value of employee benefits was included, the total compensation premium
for federal employees over their private-sector equivalents increased to between
30 percent and 40 percent.18 The American Enterprise Institute found a 14 percent
pay premium and a 61 percent total compensation premium.19
Base salary is only one component of a federal employee’s total compensation.
In addition to high starting wages, federal employees normally receive an annual
cost-of-living adjustment (available to all employees) and generous scheduledraises known as step increases. Moreover, a large proportion of federal employees are stationed in the Washington, D.C., area and other large cities and areentitled to steep locality pay enhancement to account for the high cost of livingin these areas.
A federal employee with five years’ experience receives 20 vacation days, 13 paid
sick days, and all 10 federal holidays compared to an employee at a large privatecompany who receives 13 days of vacation and eight paid sick days. Federal healthbenefits are more comparable to those provided by Fortune 500 employers withthe government paying 72 percent of the weighted average premiums, but this ismuch higher than for most private plans. Almost half of private firms do not offer
any employer contributions at all.

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The obvious solution to these discrepancies is to move closer to a market model
for federal pay and benefits. One need is for a neutral agency to oversee pay hiring
decisions, especially for high-demand occupations. The OPM is independent ofagency operations, so it can assess requirements more neutrally. For many years,
with its Special Pay Rates program, the OPM evaluated claims that federal rates
in an area were too low to attract competent employees and allowed agencies tooffer higher pay when needed rather than increased rates for all. Ideally, the OPM
should establish an initial pay schedule for every occupation and region, monitor
turnover rates and applicant-to-position ratios, and adjust pay and recruitment
on that basis. Most of this requires legislation, but the OPM should be an advocate
for a true equality of benefits between the public and private sectors.
Reforming Federal Retirement Benefits. Career civil servants enjoy retirement benefits that are nearly unheard of in the private sector. Federal employees
retire earlier (normally at age 55 after 30 years), enjoy richer pension annuities,
and receive automatic cost-of-living adjustments based on the areas in which they
retire. Defined-benefit federal pensions are fully indexed for inflation—a practicethat is extremely rare in the private sector. A federal employee with a preretirement income of $25,000 under the older of the two federal retirement plans will
receive at least $200,000 more over a 20-year period than will private-sector workers with the same preretirement salary under historic inflation levels.
During the early Reagan years, the OPM reformed many specific provisions of
the federal pension program to save billions administratively. Under OPM pressure, Reagan and Congress ultimately ended the old Civil Service Retirement
System (CSRS) entirely for new employees, which (counting disbursements forthe unfunded liability) accounted for 51.3 percent of the federal government's
total payroll. The retirement system that replaced it—the Federal Employees
Retirement System (FERS)—reduced the cost of federal employee retirement disbursements to 28.5 percent of payroll (including contributions to Social Security
and the employer match to the Thrift Savings Plan). More of the pension cost was
shifted to the employee, but the new system was much more equitable for the 40
percent who received few or no benefits under the old system.
By 1999, more than half of the federal workforce was covered by the new system,and the government’s per capita share of the cost (as the employer) was less thanhalf the cost of the old system: 20.2 percent of FERS payroll vs. 44.3 percent of
CSRS payroll, representing one of the largest examples of government savings
anywhere. Although the government pension system has become more like private
pension systems, it still remains much more generous, and other means might beconsidered in the future to move it even closer to private plans.
GSA: Landlord and Contractor Management. The General Services
Administration is best known as the federal government’s landlord—designing,
constructing, managing, and preserving government buildings and leasing and— 77 —

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promisemanaging outside commercial real estate contracting with 376.9 million square feetof space. Obviously, as its prime function, real estate expertise is key to the GSA’s
success. However, the GSA is also the government’s purchasing agent, connecting
federal purchasers with commercial products and services in the private sector
and their personnel management functions. With contractors performing so many
functions today, the GSA therefore becomes a de facto part of governmentwide
personnel management. The GSA also manages the Presidential Transition Act(PTA) process, which also directly involves the OPM. A recent proposal would
have incorporated the OPM and GSA (and OMB). Fortunately, this did not takeplace in that form, but it would make sense for GSA and OPM leadership and staff
to hold regular meetings to work through matters of common interest such as
moderating PTA personnel restrictions and the relationships between contract
and civil service employees.
Reductions-in-Force. Reducing the number of federal employees seems an
obvious way to reduce the overall expense of the civil service, and many prior
Administrations have attempted to do just this. Presidents Bill Clinton andBarack Obama began their terms, as did Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, by
mandating a freeze on the hiring of new federal employees, but these efforts did
not lead to permanent and substantive reductions in the number of nondefense
federal employees.
First, it is a challenge even to know which workers to cut. As mentioned, there
are 2 million federal employees, but since budgets have exploded, so has thetotal number of personnel with nearly 10 times more federal contractors thanfederal employees. Contractors are less expensive because they are not entitledto high government pensions or benefits and are easier to fire and discipline. In
addition, millions of state government employees work under federal grants, in
effect administering federal programs; these cannot be cut directly. Cutting federal
employment can be helpful and can provide a simple story to average citizens, but
cutting functions, levels, funds, and grants is much more important than setting
simple employment size.
Simply reducing numbers can actually increase costs. OMB instructions following President Trump’s employment freeze told agencies to consider buyout
programs, encouraging early retirements in order to shift costs from current budgets in agencies to the retirement system and minimize the number of personnel
fired. The Environmental Protection Agency immediately implemented such a
program, and OMB urged the passage of legislation to increase payout maximums
from $25,000 to $40,000 to further increase spending under the “cuts.” President
Clinton’s OMB had introduced a similar buyout that cost the Treasury $2.8 billion,
mostly for those who were going to retire anyway. Moreover, when a new employee
is hired to fill a job recently vacated in a buyout, the government for a time is paying
two people to fill one job.

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What is needed at the beginning is a freeze on all top career-position hiring
to prevent “burrowing-in” by outgoing political appointees. Moreover, four factors determine the order in which employees are protected during layoffs: tenure,veterans’ preference, seniority, and performance in that order of importance.
Despite several attempts in the House of Representatives during the Trump years
to enact legislation that would modestly increase the weight given to performanceover time-of-service, the fierce opposition by federal managers associations andunions representing long-serving but not necessarily well-performing constituents
explains why the bills failed to advance. A determined President should insist that
performance be first and be wary of costly types of reductions-in-force.
Impenetrable Bureaucracy. The GAO has identified almost a hundred actions
that the executive branch or Congress could take to improve efficiency and effectiveness across 37 areas that span a broad range of government missions andfunctions. It identified 33 actions to address mission fragmentation, overlap, andduplication in the 12 areas of defense, economic development, health, homeland
security, and information technology. It also identified 59 other opportunities for
executive agencies or Congress to reduce the cost of government operations or
enhance revenue collection across 25 areas of government.20
A logical place to begin would be to identify and eliminate functions and programs that are duplicated across Cabinet departments or spread across multiple
agencies. Congress hoped to help this effort by passing the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993,21 which required all federal agencies to define
their missions, establish goals and objectives, and measure and report their performance to Congress. Three decades of endless time-consuming reports later,
the government continues to grow but with more paper and little change eitherin performance or in the number of levels between government and the people.
The Brookings Institution’s Paul Light emphasizes the importance of theincreasing number of levels between the top heads of departments and the people
at the bottom who receive the products of government decision-making. He estimates that there are perhaps 50 or more levels of impenetrable bureaucracy and noway other than imperfect performance appraisals to communicate between them.22
The Trump Administration proposed some possible consolidations, but thesewere not received favorably in Congress, whose approval is necessary for most suchproposals. The best solution is to cut functions and budgets and devolve responsibilities. That is a challenge primarily for Presidents, Congress, and the entire
government, but the OPM still needs to lead the way governmentwide in managing
personnel properly even in any future smaller government.
Creating a Responsible Career Management Service. The people elect a
President who is charged by Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution23 with seeingthat the laws are “faithfully executed” with his political appointees democraticallylinked to that legitimizing responsibility. An autonomous bureaucracy has neither— 79 —

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independent constitutional status nor separate moral legitimacy. Therefore, career
civil servants by themselves should not lead major policy changes and reforms.
The creation of the Senior Executive Service was the top career change introduced by the 1978 Carter–Campbell Civil Service Reform Act. Its aim was toprofessionalize the career service and make it more responsible to the democratically elected commander in chief and his political appointees while respecting therights due to career employees, very much including those in the top positions. The
new SES would allow management to be more flexible in filling and reassigning
executive positions and locations beyond narrow specialties for more efficientmission accomplishment and would provide pay and large bonuses to motivate
career performance.
The desire to infiltrate political appointees improperly into the high career
civil service has been widespread in every Administration, whether Democrat or
Republican. Democratic Administrations, however, are typically more successful
because they require the cooperation of careerists, who generally lean heavily to
the Left. Such burrowing-in requires career job descriptions for new positions thatclosely mirror the functions of a political appointee; a special hiring authority thatallows the bypassing of veterans’ preference as well as other preference categories;
and the ability to frustrate career candidates from taking the desired position.
President Reagan’s OPM began by limiting such SES burrowing-in, arguingthat the proper course was to create and fill political positions. This simultaneously promotes the CSRA principle of political leadership of the bureaucracy andrespects the professional autonomy of the career service. But this requires thatcareer SES employees should respect political rights too. Actions such as career
staff reserving excessive numbers of key policy positions as “career reserved” todeny them to noncareer SES employees frustrate CSRA intent. Another evasionis the general domination by career staff on SES personnel evaluation boards, theopposite of noncareer executives dominating these critical meeting discussions
as expected in the SES. Career training also often underplays the political role in
leadership and inculcates career-first policy and value viewpoints.
Frustrated with these activities by top career executives, the Trump Administration issued Executive Order 1395724 to make career professionals in positions
that are not normally subject to change as a result of a presidential transition but
who discharge significant duties and exercise significant discretion in formulating
and implementing executive branch policy and programs an exception to the competitive hiring rules and examinations for career positions under a new Schedule
F. It ordered the Director of OPM and agency heads to set procedures to prepare
lists of such confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating
positions and prepare procedures to create exceptions from civil service rules whencareerists hold such positions, from which they can relocate back to the regularcivil service after such service. The order was subsequently reversed by President— 80 —

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Biden25 at the demand of the civil service associations and unions. It should bereinstated, but SES responsibility should come first.
Managing Personnel in a Union Environment. Historically, unions were
thought to be incompatible with government management. There is a natural limit
to the bargaining power of private-sector unions, but the financial bottom line of
public-sector unions is not similarly constrained. If private-sector unions push
too hard a bargain, they can so harm a company or so reduce efficiency that theiremployer is forced to go out of business and eliminate union jobs altogether. Thereis no such limit in government, which cannot go out of business, so demands canbe excessive without negatively affecting employee and union bottom lines.
Even Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt considered union representation in the federal government to be incompatible with democracy. Striking andeven threats of bargaining and delay were considered acts against the people andthus improper. It was not until President John Kennedy that union representationin the federal government was recognized—and then merely by executive order.
Labor bargaining was not set in statute until the Carter Administration was forced
by Congress to do so in order to pass the CSRA, although all bargaining was placed
under OPM review.
The CSRA was able to maintain strong management rights for the OPM andagencies and forbade collective bargaining on pay and benefits as well as management prerogatives. Over time, OPM, FLRA, and agencies’ personnel offices andcourts, especially in Democratic Administrations, narrowed management rights
so that labor bargaining expanded as management rights contracted. But the management rights are still in statute, have been enforced by some Administrations,and should be enforced again by any future OPM and agency managements, whichshould not be intimidated by union power.
Rather than being daunted, President Trump issued three executive orders:lllExecutive Order 13836, encouraging agencies to renegotiate all unioncollective bargaining agreements to ensure consistency with the law andrespect for management rights;26
Executive Order 13837, encouraging agencies to prevent union
representatives from using official time preparing or pursuing grievances orfrom engaging in other union activity on government time;27 andExecutive Order 13839, encouraging agencies both to limit labor grievanceson removals from service or on challenging performance appraisals and toprioritize performance over seniority when deciding who should be retained
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All were revoked by the Biden Administration29 and should be reinstated by thenext Administration, to include the immediate appointment of the FLRA GeneralCounsel and reactivation of the Impasses Panel.
Congress should also consider whether public-sector unions are appropriate
in the first place. The bipartisan consensus up until the middle of the 20th century held that these unions were not compatible with constitutional government.30
After more than half a century of experience with public-sector union frustrationsof good government management, it is hard to avoid reaching the same conclusion.
Fully Staffing the Ranks of Political Appointees. The President must rely
legally on his top department and agency officials to run the government and on top
White House staff employees to coordinate operations through regular Cabinet andother meetings and communications. Without this political leadership, the career
civil service becomes empowered to lead the executive branch without democratic
legitimacy. While many obstacles stand in his way, a President is constitutionallyand statutorily required to fill the top political positions in the executive branchboth to assist him and to provide overall legitimacy.
Most Presidents have had some difficulty obtaining congressional approval of
their appointees, but this has worsened recently. After the 2016 election, President
Trump faced special hostility from the opposition party and the media in getting
his appointees confirmed or even considered by the Senate. His early Office ofPresidential Personnel (PPO) did not generally remove political appointees fromthe previous Administration but instead relied mostly on prior political appointees and career civil servants to run the government. Such a reliance on holdovers
and bureaucrats led to a lack of agency control and the absolute refusal of theActing Attorney General from the Obama Administration to obey a direct orderfrom the President.
Under the early PPO, the Trump Administration appointed fewer political
appointees in its first few months in office than had been appointed in any recent
presidency, partly because of historically high partisan congressional obstructions
but also because several officials announced that they preferred fewer political
appointees in the agencies as a way to cut federal spending. Whatever the reasoning,
this had the effect of permanently hampering the rollout of the new President’s
agenda. Thus, in those critical early years, much of the government relied on senior
careerists and holdover Obama appointees to carry out the sensitive responsibilities that would otherwise belong to the new President’s appointees.
Fortunately, the later PPO, OPM, and Senate leadership began to cooperate tobuild a strong team to implement the President’s personnel appointment agenda.
Any new Administration would be wise to learn that it will need a full cadre ofsound political appointees from the beginning if it expects to direct this enormous
federal bureaucracy. A close relationship between the PPO at the White Houseand the OPM, coordinating with agency assistant secretaries of administration— 82 —

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and PPO’s chosen White House Liaisons and their staff at each agency, is essential
to the management of this large, multilevel, resistant, and bureaucratic challenge.
If “personnel is policy” is to be our general guide, it would make sense to give thePresident direct supervision of the bureaucracy with the OPM Director available
in his Cabinet.
A REFORMED BUREAUCRACY

Today, the federal government’s bureaucracy cannot even meet its own civil
service ideals. The merit criteria of ability, knowledge, and skills are no longer thebasis for recruitment, selection, or advancement, while pay and benefits for comparable work are substantially above those in the private sector. Retention is notbased primarily on performance, and for the most part, inadequate performance
is not appraised, corrected, or punished.
The authors have made many suggestions here that, if implemented, could
bring that bureaucracy more under control and enable it to work more efficiently
and responsibly, which is especially required for the half of civilian governmentthat administers its undeniable responsibilities for defense and foreign affairs.
While a better administered central bureaucracy is crucial for both those anddomestic responsibilities, the problem of properly running the government goesbeyond simple bureaucratic administration. The specific deficiencies of the federal bureaucracy—size, levels of organization, inefficiency, expense, and lack of
responsiveness to political leadership—are rooted in the progressive ideology that
unelected experts can and should be trusted to promote the general welfare in justabout every area of social life.
The Constitution, however, reserved a few enumerated powers to the federal
government while leaving the great majority of domestic activities to state, local,
and private governance. As James Madison explained: “The powers reserved tothe several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of
affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal
order, improvement and prosperity of the state.”31 Modern progressive politics
has simply given the national government more to do than the complex separation-of-powers Constitution allows.
That progressive system has broken down in our time, and the only real solution
is for the national government to do less: to decentralize and privatize as much as
possible and then ensure that the remaining bureaucracy is managed effectively
along the lines of the enduring principles set out in detail here.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: The authors are grateful for the collaborative work of the individuals listed as contributors tothis chapter for the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The authors alone assume responsibility for the content of
this chapter, and no views expressed herein should be attributed to any other individual.

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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise
ENDNOTES

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

13.

14.
15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section1 (accessed
February 1, 2023).
5 U.S. Code §§ 1101 et seq. and 1103(a)(5), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/part-II/chapter-11(accessed February 1, 2023).
5 U.S. Code § 1201, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/1201 (accessed February 1, 2023).
5 U.S. Code § 7101, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7101 (accessed February 1, 2023), and § 7117,
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7117 (accessed February 1, 2023).
S. 1871, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, Public Law No. 76-252, August 2, 1939, https://
govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/53/STATUTE-53-Pg1147.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).
H.R. 995, Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994, Public Law No. 103-353,
101st Congress, October 13, 1994, https://www.congress.gov/103/statute/STATUTE-108/STATUTE-108-Pg3149.
pdf (accessed February 1, 2023).
5 U.S. Code § 1206, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/1206 (accessed February 1, 2023).
42 U.S. Code § 2000e, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e (accessed February 1, 2023).
40 U.S. Code § 581, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/40/581 (accessed February 1, 2023).
U.S. National Archives, “Milestone Documents: Pendleton Act (1883),” last reviewed February 8, 2022, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/pendleton-act (accessed February 2, 2023).
S. 2640, Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Public Law No. 95-454, 95th Congress, October 13, 1978, https://www.congress.gov/95/statute/STATUTE-92/STATUTE-92-Pg1111.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).
Donovan Sack and Bill Theobald, “Veterans Affairs Pays $140 Million in Bonuses Amid Scandals,” USA Today,
November 11, 2015, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/11/11/veterans-affairs-pays-142million-bonuses-amid-scandals/75537586/ (accessed March 15, 2023).
U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Federal Workforce: Distribution of Performance Ratings Acrossthe Federal Government, 2013,” GAO-16-520R, May 9, 2016, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-16-520r.pdf(accessed March 15, 2023); U.S. Government Accountability Office, Results-Oriented Management: OPM Needs
to Do More to Ensure Meaningful Distinctions Are Made in SES Ratings and Performance Awards, GAO-15189, January 2015, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-15-189.pdf (accessed March 15, 2023); U.S. Government
Accountability Office, “Measuring Federal Employee Performance,” WatchBlog, posted October 18, 2016,
https://www.gao.gov/blog/2016/10/18/measuring-federal-employee-performance (accessed March 15, 2023);
Lisa Rein, “The Federal Workforce, Where Everyone’s Performance Gets Rave Reviews,” The Washington Post,
June 13, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/13/heres-the-news-from-thefederal-government-where-everyone-is-above-average-way-above/ (accessed March 15, 2023).
Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944), https://ia902300.us.archive.
org/17/items/mises-pdfs/1944-01-01_LudwigVonMises_Bureaucracy.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).
Figure 1, “Permanent, Non-Senior Executive Service Employee Performance Rating Outcomes (All Rating
Systems, Calendar Year 2013),” in U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Federal Workforce: Distribution of
Performance Ratings Across the Federal Government, 2013,” p. 6.
President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13839, “Promoting Accountability and Streamlining Removal
Procedures Consistent with Merit System Principles,” May 25, 2018, in Federal Register, Vol. 83, No. 106 (June 1,2018), pp. 25343–25347, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-06-01/pdf/2018-11939.pdf (accessed
February 2, 2023).
President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Executive Order 14003, “Protecting the Federal Workforce,” January 22, 2021, inFederal Register, Vol. 86, No. 16 (January 27, 2021), pp. 7231–7233, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR2021-01-27/pdf/2021-01924.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).
Rachel Greszler and James Sherk, “Why It Is Time to Reform Compensation for Federal Employees,” The
Heritage Foundation, July 27, 2016, https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/why-it-time-reformcompensation-federal-employees.
Andrew G. Biggs and Jason Richwine, “Comparing Federal and Private Sector Compensation,” American
Enterprise Institute Working Paper No. 2011-02, revised June 2011, https://www.aei.org/wp-content/
uploads/2011/10/AEI-Working-Paper-on-Federal-Pay-May-2011.pdf?x91208 (accessed February 2, 2023).

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2025 Presidential Transition Project
20. See Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, “Government Efficiency and Effectiveness:
Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Billions in Financial Benefits,”
testimony before the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight, Committee on Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate, GAO-21-544T, May 12, 2021, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao21-544t.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).
21. S. 20, Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, Public Law No. 103-62, 103rd Congress, August
3, 1993, https://www.congress.gov/103/statute/STATUTE-107/STATUTE-107-Pg285.pdf (accessed
February 2, 2023).
22. Paul Light, “The Real Crisis in Government,” The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin), January 22, 2010, https://
captimes.com/news/opinion/column/paul-c-light-the-real-crisis-in-government/article_9e139318-3d005898-908d-4c7aee1e105d.html (accessed March 15, 2023).
23. U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 3, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section3 (accessed
February 2, 2023).
24. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13957, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” October 21,
2020, in Federal Register, Vol. 85, No. 207 (October 26, 2020), pp. 67631–67635, https://www.govinfo.gov/
content/pkg/FR-2020-10-26/pdf/2020-23780.pdf (accessed February 2, 2023).
25. See note 17, supra.
26. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13836, “Developing Efficient, Effective, and Cost-Reducing
Approaches to Federal Sector Collective Bargaining,” May 25, 2018, in Federal Register, Vol. 83, No. 106 (June 1,2018), pp. 25329–25334, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-06-01/pdf/2018-11913.pdf (accessed
February 2, 2023).
27. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13837, “Ensuring Transparency, Accountability, and Efficiency
in Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Use,” May 25, 2018, in Federal Register, Vol. 83, No. 106 (June 1, 2018),
pp. 25335–25340, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-06-01/pdf/2018-11916.pdf (accessed
February 2, 2023).
28. See note 16, supra.
29. See note 17, supra.
30. Philip K. Howard, Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions (Garden City,
NY: Rodin Books, 2023).
31. James Madison, The Federalist Papers No. 45, January 26, 1788, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/
Madison/01-10-02-0254 (accessed February 1, 2023).

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