President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to establish a hiring ratio to reduce the scale of the federal workforce.
A White House document on the order obtained and reviewed by Breitbart News details it implements Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) workforce optimization initiative.”
The order instructs Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to develop and implement a plan under which most agencies can hire just one new employee for every four employees who depart.
“Upon expiration of the Day 1 hiring freeze and implementation of the hiring plan, agencies will be able to hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart from federal service,” the White House document on the order obtained and reviewed by Breitbart News states.
The official order notes that government “functions related to public safety, immigration enforcement, or law enforcement” will not be subject to the hiring ratio.
Moreover, according to the White House document, agencies are directed to plan “for large-scale reductions in force and determine which agency components (or agencies themselves) may be eliminated or combined because their functions aren’t required by law.”
Trump and DOGE head Elon Musk spoke to the press about the newly formed department before Trump signed the order in the Oval Office.
Trump said that DOGE has uncovered “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.”
“Nobody had any idea [it] was that bad, that sick, and that corrupt,” Trump said.
He was also critical of judges, who he says want to block DOGE and his administration “from looking for corruption” on the heels of a ruling that Reuters notes denies DOGE access to the payment systems at the Treasury Department.
“And it seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption, especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars worth, much more than that, in just a short period of time,” Trump said.
Musk notably spoke about the importance of taking power away from the federal bureaucracy.
“So if there’s not a good feedback loop from the people to the government… if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?” Musk asked.
“If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in a democracy; we live in a bureaucracy,” he added.
Musk said the “feedback loop” must be closed so that the public and elected officials, rather than bureaucrats, make decisions.
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