Subject: Federal Employee Buyout - High Stakes Gamble
Various outlets are reporting that the Trump Administration is going to offer every single federal employee an opportunity to get "bought out" - to take an eight-month deferred resignation, so they basically get eight months of compensation and benefits if they quit now:

President Donald Trump's administration is set to offer every single federal worker the chance to take a "deferred resignation" with a severance package of roughly eight months of pay and benefits.

A senior administration official told NBC News that they expect 5%-10% of the federal workforce to quit, which, they estimate, could lead to around $100 billion in savings.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politi...

Man, is that a massive gamble on the Administration's part. I'm sure that they're imagining that it will be nice to get rid of 5-10% of the federal government and trim out all of the fat. But the reality is that about 70% of federal civilian employees work in the defense and national security agencies, with the largest number working in Veteran's Affairs:

https://ourpublicservice.org/f...

That's the funny thing - when people imagine a "federal worker," they may picture a useless bureaucrat writing useless regulations in the Depart of Commerce or something - but the "typical" federal worker is more likely to be an orderly in a VA hospital or a civilian employee in the Army or a border patrol agent. There is zero appetite for reducing the scale or service of those defense and national security agencies....so unless the response rate is really non-representative, the Administration is going to have to end up immediately hiring people to replace the majority of those who take this deal.

Hence, the high stakes gamble. They're obviously hoping that the people who take the resignation offer are disproportionately in positions they won't have to go out and re-fill. Odds are against them, but we'll see how it goes....