Subject: Re: Medicaid
Yup! The bad move was in assuming that some federal employees had 2 brain cells to rub together and wouldn't turn off things like Medicaid.

That would show that they still don't have any understanding of how the federal government works. When OMB issues an official memorandum on behalf of the President requiring them to freeze all federal programs that meet certain criteria, and Medicaid is a program that meets those criteria and hasn't been exempted, they don't get to decide on their own to just refuse to freeze Medicaid. When state and local officials call them up and ask whether the OMB order applies to Medicaid, they can't just decide on their own that it doesn't (again, which is why the Press Secretary couldn't say that, either). They have to look at the words on the page, even if the words are poorly drafted.

And again - this is especially so in the current Administration, which has made an enormous point of telling federal employees that they damn well better follow the instructions of the political appointees! No more using independent judgment about what policies and priorities to implement - they have to do what they're told. Oh - and we're telling all of the other federal employees to monitor them to make sure they don't evade those instructions. So if you tell them to freeze every program that meets certain criteria, they're not going to put themselves out there to pick and choose which ones should be frozen.

The problem was in the ill-crafted and stupid instructions - not the employees for following the ill-crafted and stupid instructions and reading what was written on the page.