The Biden administration has been working on a plan to block Donald Trump from draining the Swamp should he win come Election Day. But there’s just one critical flaw: Executive branch policies established by one president can be erased by the next. Just as Biden was able to stop Trump’s Schedule F from the very beginning of his presidency, so too can Trump reinstate it if he becomes president once again.
Changing the Rules
Trump’s 2020 Schedule F executive order created a new category of federal employees in policy-related positions that serves at the pleasure of the president – which, of course, makes them much easier to fire and replace.
The Office of Personnel Management issued a new rule to more narrowly define the positions that could fall under Schedule F, should Trump win re-election this November, to form a kind of paper dam to stop a second-term Trump from making good on his promise to drain the Swamp. “We are confident that our final rule is the best reading of civil service statutes and is grounded in the civil service in the statutory language, congressional intent, legislative history and decades of applicable case law and practice,” OPM Deputy Director Rob Shriver told the press. “The rule is strong, it will help to ensure the rights employees earned as envisioned by Congress when it enacted the Civil Service Reform Act in 1978 and expanded and strengthened those protections through subsequent enactments.”
Like any executive branch regulation, however, it can be undone by future administrations – and team Biden knows that. With this new rule, however, any future president who hopes to revive Schedule F or something like it would have to put in the time and effort to follow the rule-making process that created this regulation to remove it, and that would certainly slow any attempt to drain the Swamp. Slow it, but not stop it.
The Fear of Schedule F – or Just Trump in General?
Why worry about Schedule F if Biden has already killed it? Though the administration’s new plan is ostensibly aimed at any future president, it’s clear the real concern is Donald Trump and the promised return of Schedule F.
As Liberty Nation’s Tim Donner wrote last year, “Schedule F would trim the dead weight and gristle from a ridiculously oversized and overreaching bureaucracy with the hidden power to ignore or even reverse presidential initiatives. What defines the civil service and its more than two million civilian employees in the eyes of so many Americans is its permanence, the fact that it is almost impossible to fire such taxpayer-funded employees. Trump plans to change all that.”
American taxpayers are on the hook for more than $200 billion a year in civil service payroll and benefits. It’s easy to see the appeal of enabling Trump to more effectively drain the Swamp of any alleged public servants should they fail in their duty to the people.
Of course, as Mr. Donner also pointed out, there’s a downside as well. While a president dedicated to liberty and a small government could do a lot of good here, another could do considerable damage by rebuilding a “civil service” monstrosity that makes America long for the days of the current deep state.
What the Biden administration's latest action really demonstrates is the fear of Trump winning the White House in November. Election Day approaches, and the current president isn’t faring so well in the polls. In 2020, the Biden campaign wanted America to see Trump as a destroyer – a reckless radical who, through unconstitutional and authoritarian practices, did great damage to our once great nation. They want the same again in 2024, but now they have the reality of Joe Biden’s first term as president to contend with. The coming election will be a nationwide reckoning, an answer to which presidency harmed or helped America – and this new rule is just another way for our unsure incumbent to hedge his bet.
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