"The next president can’t 'go around and just find all the little bits and pieces of everything that they smashed and tape it together and say: ‘Here you go. I give you the world as it looked in 2023,’" former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.
Scale of cuts and canceled programs
The administrative rupture described in the source is quantified in personnel and program deletions. More than 200,000 federal jobs were eliminated, including 7,000 positions at the Social Security Administration, 7,000 at the IRS, 3,500 at the Food and Drug Administration, 1,200 at the National Institutes of Health, and 1,300 at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. No federal department escaped the slashing, and some agencies saw virtually all of their positions eliminated.
Beyond personnel, programs and obligations were summarily canceled. Contracts and grants were sometimes terminated after being identified by rudimentary artificial intelligence programs as affiliated with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled, halting food aid and disease prevention efforts globally. At other agencies, such as the National Nuclear Security Administration, employees were fired without clear understanding of their roles, prompting emergency rehiring efforts.
DOGE, Musk, and a haphazard approach to savings
The source recounts the rise of an operation called DOGE, tied to Elon Musk and to the broader administration's effort to cut government. DOGE promised up to $2 trillion in federal savings but, according to the reporting, failed to reach that goal. DOGE's claim to have saved taxpayers more than $200 billion is described as suspect due to accounting errors, and even if accurate it represented a small share of the federal budget. The operation is depicted as "thoroughly haphazard," lacking planning or strategy and operating according to the whims of Musk—then one of the president’s strongest allies—and of the president himself.
Patrimonialism and the politicization of the civil service
Jonathan Rauch’s concept of patrimonialism is invoked to frame the shift in governance: a system driven by personal loyalty to the leader and the leader’s ability to dole out rewards and punishments. The source argues the administration moved aggressively to expand executive authority and to politicize the career civil service, especially at the senior executive level. The argument follows that the enemy of patrimonialism is bureaucracy: a nonpartisan administrative state that provides rules and guardrails against ill-advised policymaking, corruption, or illegality.
What restoration must look like: reopening agencies and rethinking process
The source makes a distinction between restoring capabilities and simply returning to the pre-cut status quo. Restoration, in this framing, includes reopening shuttered organizations such as USAID and rehiring the workers necessary for agencies like the IRS to function. But restoration is coupled with redesign: the source cites a critique from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in Abundance that government has prized procedure over results, producing layers of regulation that make action difficult.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is quoted in the source: "If the argument is that we have a horrendous bureaucracy—absolutely correct. It is terrible.…That is common sense." The prescription offered is not fewer bureaucrats, but system redesign so operations do not overemphasize some goals—such as fairness and diversity—at the expense of efficiency and measurable results. The source singles out hiring and firing as an area where risk aversion and legal restrictions have limited managers’ ability to manage; the proposed fix is more trust in managers to do their jobs while adhering to law.
What this means for USAID, public-health agencies, and federal workers
- USAID: With the agency described as dismantled and food-aid and disease-prevention efforts halted, the immediate implication is the need to reopen the agency and re-establish those global programs.
- Public-health agencies (FDA, NIH): The loss of thousands of employees at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health suggests urgent rehiring to restore capacity that, in the past two decades, helped facilitate a covid vaccine and improved children’s health.
- Federal workers and managers: The source argues managers need more latitude to hire and fire—reducing procedural drag and risk aversion—while remaining within the rule of law. Recalibration is presented as essential to restore governing capacity without reverting to "chainsaw" tactics.
The reporting assembles a clear argument: the next administration faces a twofold task. First, to restore core capabilities—reopening agencies such as USAID and rehiring staff sliced from the IRS, FDA, NIH, NOAA and others. Second, to reimagine systems so they reward results and give managers the trust and tools to act. As the source puts it, that recalibration "can’t be accomplished with a chainsaw."
Source: Defense One — The next president must reimagine, not just restore, the administrative state
