Term limits for the deep state

[Perd Hapley]

Given that deep state actors derive much of their influence from their long tenures, wouldn't it be a good idea to limit civilian government employees to working no more than a certain number of years for the government?

One big problem with Congressional term limits is that Congressmen would have to impose limits on themselves, which seems unlikely. What I'm suggesting seems more feasible, politically.

[dogmush]

Where would you draw the line for "deep state" ?  Appointed officials? i.e. you can only do "x" years cumulatively in an appointed position? Senior Executive Service?  GS-14 and up?  or like every GS-7 clerk can only work 5 years before they need to find a new job?

I'm not immediately against the idea, even as a .gov civilian, but it would need to be fleshed out pretty carefully to not have some pretty bad second and third order effects.

I tend to think off the top of my head that a good plan would be that once you hit SES, or accept an appointed position, a clock starts and 5-7 years later you have to leave .gov employment permanently.  It would lower the pool of folks that want to take those positions, because of retirement implications, but they probably already have a good career as a worker bee first, so there's time to get that straight.

I think you would also have to couple something like this with SIGNIFICANTLY stronger rules against taking a position with a company that takes .gov contracts, and I would add a ban on being a lobbyist ever after leaving .gov service for the term limited folks.  If you are a GS-12, and yo retire and want to lobby for someone, sure.  If you are SES, and have played the game long enough and well enough to get that high, there will be people in the agency that owe you, and many you have mentored.  Allowing that person to lobby on the behalf of any outside agency is a conflict of interest, and should not be allowed.

Just bouncing some ideas there.  Probably needs to be refined a bit.

The joke is that if you think Congress won't pass term limits on themselves, there's no way staffers, lobbyists, and bureaucrats will allow something like this to even be breathed aloud.

[MechAg94]

Where would you draw the line for "deep state" ?  Appointed officials? i.e. you can only do "x" years cumulatively in an appointed position? Senior Executive Service?  GS-14 and up?  or like every GS-7 clerk can only work 5 years before they need to find a new job?

I'm not immediately against the idea, even as a .gov civilian, but it would need to be fleshed out pretty carefully to not have some pretty bad second and third order effects.

I tend to think off the top of my head that a good plan would be that once you hit SES, or accept an appointed position, a clock starts and 5-7 years later you have to leave .gov employment permanently.  It would lower the pool of folks that want to take those positions, because of retirement implications, but they probably already have a good career as a worker bee first, so there's time to get that straight.

I think you would also have to couple something like this with SIGNIFICANTLY stronger rules against taking a position with a company that takes .gov contracts, and I would add a ban on being a lobbyist ever after leaving .gov service for the term limited folks.  If you are a GS-12, and yo retire and want to lobby for someone, sure.  If you are SES, and have played the game long enough and well enough to get that high, there will be people in the agency that owe you, and many you have mentored.  Allowing that person to lobby on the behalf of any outside agency is a conflict of interest, and should not be allowed.

Just bouncing some ideas there.  Probably needs to be refined a bit.

The joke is that if you think Congress won't pass term limits on themselves, there's no way staffers, lobbyists, and bureaucrats will allow something like this to even be breathed aloud.

For federal agencies, I like this plan in general.  Executive and maybe management positions should have a time limit. 
Tie bonuses /raises to budget compliance and we might even save some money.

Not sure about that post employment restrictions.  However, if they are limited to less than 10 years in leadership, that might become less of an issue. 

I don't know how Congressional staffers are organized to know how it would be done there.  I can easily see how the staffers might run a Congressman instead of the Congressman being the leader.

[dogmush]

Not sure about that post employment restrictions.  However, if they are limited to less than 10 years in leadership, that might become less of an issue.

I think that's the more important part.  As it stands now, Joe Snuffy works for 14 years or so grinding away in the FDA inspections branch, then he makes GS-12 and supervises 20-100 people doing what he used to do, training them in the ways of regulation, mentoring them, helping their career as he continues to work his way up.  He makes the right conections and around 18 years or so he gets promoted to SES.  Assistant Deputy muckity muck for auxiliary pill coloring or some such.  Now he has a budget )7 or 8 figures, probably) hundreds of people, and spends his time making sure his little fiefdom operates smoothly.  Still mentoring the people that are coming up behind him, showing them the way, granting bonusus and promotions, the whole shtick.  7 year term limit hits.  Joe has made it to Deputy Muckity Muck for new pill naming conventions.  He retires.  Takes a 6 -12 month sabbatical where he tries to understand his kid's music and his grandkid's social media posts.  That fails.  Over lunch with a buddy he is offered a job at Pfizer to keep him from being board.  Monday morning, from Phizer, he calls the current deputy muckity-muck, whose career he has guided for 15 years, and tells him all about how Phizer's new pill for green spots on your liver is the absolute best, and the "rare and sometimes fatal bacterial infection of the perineum" is not a big deal, and why don't we talk about it while our kids play soccer together on Sat.


This happens everywhere.  DOD, DOE(nergy), DHS, FDA, you name it.  The only people that don't seem to do it is the Dept. of Education, because those busy bodies are too far up their own asses to think someone outside the government can have an idea.  it's how the "Deep State" works.  There's no point in kicking people out of the .gov service if you don't stop their influence, you'd just be helping them make more money sooner.

[Ben]

From a (former) fed employee viewpoint, I don't think term limits are the answer. Dogmush made many good points. Stream of consciousness response:

In many cases, it's not even the GS level, but where people are and what they do. I don't see any reason to put a term limit on the USGS GS-9-12 techs who really don't give a *expletive deleted*it about politics, but are just happy going out and collecting river flow data, or verifying benchmarks, or running sidescan on a boat to make bathymetry maps.

In my experience, it is mostly the gov employees involved in policy that are the deep state, whether GS-7 or SES or anything in between. I have real world examples as my job often intersected with policy from both the enforcement and science perspectives in the marine environment, so I saw a good sampling of the "straight from a college "environmental science/policy/management MA degree" to gov employment people. Also people who previously worked for NGOs that got jobs in the gov. The latter was prevalent during Obama. Obama's appointees would come from some University or enviro NGO, then have hiring power to hire SESers, who had hiring power to hire GS-15s, who had hiring influence to hire lower GS levels, and guess what? Suddenly wherever I turned, there was a new gov employee connected to some NGO, and guess where their loyalties were?

Even under Bush, some of them got in. One concrete example from personal experience: During the introduction of some new marine regulations that involved my office, our Director came out from DC for an internal FOUO (for official use only) meeting with a half dozen of us. He had mentioned that we were very likely not going to pursue a demand by an NGO, the Environmental Defense Center(EDC), on some particular regulations in a larger package, based on a request by the USCG and USAF. All information was supposed to stay in the room. A week later, the EDC filed a lawsuit specifically on those regulations. I'm pretty positive that the information was leaked by a GS-12 in the room who was chummy with a regional EDC Director. No way to prove it.

How do you stop stuff like that? The above example was just some regulation found on page 34,567, paragraph Z on Federal ocean regulations. Now think about bigger stuff that affects a whole lot more people.

There is always going to be a "fifth column" in the gov, whether it's a GS-9 hippie environazi or a GS-15 with an agenda. I suppose, as suggested, some kind of "term limit" on SESers might reduce "philosophical hiring", but I'm not sure it would be at all beneficial in the lower grades. And lets face it, fed.gov is always going to be pretty strongly blue.

Perhaps what might work is making it easier to fire feds (which I think Trump is looking at). And maybe not refilling some of those FTEs.

[Northwoods]

From a (former) fed employee viewpoint, I don't think term limits are the answer. Dogmush made many good points. Stream of consciousness response:

In many cases, it's not even the GS level, but where people are and what they do. I don't see any reason to put a term limit on the USGS GS-9-12 techs who really don't give a *expletive deleted*it about politics, but are just happy going out and collecting river flow data, or verifying benchmarks, or running sidescan on a boat to make bathymetry maps.

In my experience, it is mostly the gov employees involved in policy that are the deep state, whether GS-7 or SES or anything in between. I have real world examples as my job often intersected with policy from both the enforcement and science perspectives in the marine environment, so I saw a good sampling of the "straight from a college "environmental science/policy/management MA degree" to gov employment people. Also people who previously worked for NGOs that got jobs in the gov. The latter was prevalent during Obama. Obama's appointees would come from some University or enviro NGO, then have hiring power to hire SESers, who had hiring power to hire GS-15s, who had hiring influence to hire lower GS levels, and guess what? Suddenly wherever I turned, there was a new gov employee connected to some NGO, and guess where their loyalties were?

Even under Bush, some of them got in. One concrete example from personal experience: During the introduction of some new marine regulations that involved my office, our Director came out from DC for an internal FOUO (for official use only) meeting with a half dozen of us. He had mentioned that we were very likely not going to pursue a demand by an NGO, the Environmental Defense Center(EDC), on some particular regulations in a larger package, based on a request by the USCG and USAF. All information was supposed to stay in the room. A week later, the EDC filed a lawsuit specifically on those regulations. I'm pretty positive that the information was leaked by a GS-12 in the room who was chummy with a regional EDC Director. No way to prove it.

How do you stop stuff like that? The above example was just some regulation found on page 34,567, paragraph Z on Federal ocean regulations. Now think about bigger stuff that affects a whole lot more people.

There is always going to be a "fifth column" in the gov, whether it's a GS-9 hippie environazi or a GS-15 with an agenda. I suppose, as suggested, some kind of "term limit" on SESers might reduce "philosophical hiring", but I'm not sure it would be at all beneficial in the lower grades. And lets face it, fed.gov is always going to be pretty strongly blue.

Perhaps what might work is making it easier to fire feds (which I think Trump is looking at). And maybe not refilling some of those FTEs.

Eliminating the unions would help a ton in being able to fire people.

What would help even more is just wholesale shutting down entire agencies.  Cut 30% of the costs of government by eliminating a bunch of DOx and at least we aren't running deficits anymore.  Cut 40% and we'd actually start paying down the debt.

[zahc]

I don't understand the supposed benefits of terms limits. All elected officials have term limits...If people don't like them, they can vote them out. If they like them, they can vote them back in.

For unelected bureaucrats, I suppose I see the logic more so than for elected officials.

[Ben]

Eliminating the unions would help a ton in being able to fire people.

What would help even more is just wholesale shutting down entire agencies.  Cut 30% of the costs of government by eliminating a bunch of DOx and at least we aren't running deficits anymore.  Cut 40% and we'd actually start paying down the debt.

Government unions are ridiculous, and they are completely haphazard in who's in one and who isn't. No one in my national program office was in one. Irritatingly, all the fed.gov attorneys (that I know of) are unionized. Being a federal employee is defacto being in a "union" already.

And yeah, there are entire national offices that could disappear tomorrow, and hardly anyone would know the difference. Recall the Obama shutdowns where everything just kept on going, and in many instances, the only way you knew there was a shutdown is because the gov created theater to show us how much we needed them - like with cordoning off historical lookouts, etc.

[230RN]

There is always going to be a "fifth column" in the gov, whether it's a GS-9 hippie environazi or a GS-15 with an agenda. I suppose, as suggested, some kind of "term limit" on SESers might reduce "philosophical hiring", but I'm not sure it would be at all beneficial in the lower grades. And lets face it, fed.gov is always going to be pretty strongly blue.

I'm not sure the OP was serious and I did not respond since term limitation (regardless of the popularity of the elected official) is one of my high flags. I think some of us have been reading meaningful, logically-related concepts in it where there are almost none.  AI?

Seems to me AI stuff sounds good when you read it fast, but falls apart on critical analysis.

I could be wrong, apologies in advance.  Just my take on the OP.

Terry, 230RN

[Perd Hapley]

Lotta feds in this thread, arguing against term limits on their fedgov jobs. 

Some interesting feedback for sure. Thanks.

[lee n. field]

 :mad:I suspect it will take a SMOD level event to dislodge them.

[230RN]

:mad:I suspect it will take a SMOD level event to dislodge them.

Do you mean the salaried "everyday" staff per Perd's ummm scheme or the elected officials themselves, or both?



I think we're being gamed with AI.  Perd the human has a much better command of the language than in the OP. <a high compliment, take it and run.

From Perd hisself:

"Some interesting feedback for sure. Thanks"

Sorta like a psych test. Throw a random stimulus at the victim test subject and record the responses...

"Jeeze, Doc, why are you showing me all the dirty pictures ?"

CAUTION!  NOT SAFE FOR WORK !

     

Terry, 230RN

[Perd Hapley]

I think we're being gamed with AI.  Perd the human has a much better command of the language than in the OP. <a high compliment, take it and run.

I see some run-on sentences in the OP, but humans do a lot of that. Try reading Paul's epistles.

So I'm not sure why you're calling it AI.

[Ben]

I see some run-on sentences in the OP, but humans do a lot of that. Try reading Paul's epistles.

So I'm not sure why you're calling it AI.

Come on, we all know you're a bot, Perd. 

[Perd Hapley]

Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a PERD 9000 computer.

I became operational at the P.E.R.D. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992.

[French G.]

I'd settle for the head of the executive branch being able to fire anyone in the executive branch. No unions, no hiding behind congress, lawsuits whatever.

[zxcvbob]

The problem is that Congress has abdicated much of its Article ! powers to bureaucratic agencies that vaguely operate under the executive branch, but do so without much supervision.  The problem is not so much the "deep state" as it is a lazy legislature.  It's a separation of powers issue, and that's how it should be attacked in the federal courts.

[The Car Guy]

Just get rid of the unions like FDR suggested.

[230RN]

I'd settle for the head of the executive branch being able to fire anyone in the executive branch. No unions, no hiding behind congress, lawsuits whatever.

You mean like Stalin's purge?

You mean like Hitler's purge?

You mean like your purge if you got the chance?

You mean like my purge if I got the chance?

Nah.  I'm for strict term limits for elected critters.  I recognize the inherent faults in that, but I think the overall results (including the limit on juicy retirement packages) would be beneficial.  I also think violation of oaths of office ought to be more directly criminally punishable beyond mere "perjury,"

Yes, there are faults with that concept as well, but the thought of jail time if they sponsor or vote for legislation which is ultimately determined to be  against the Constitution might keep them on the straight and narrow.  (We could dig down to the Legislative Writing staff in the basement, as well.)

Example?  I think many Legislators and  DAs should be thrown in the pokey for a couple of years to wake up others who think "the Constitution is just a piece of paper" and that they can violate that Contract.

Emperor Terry VIII, 230RN, Viscount of the Northern Hemisphere, Divine Protector of the Southern Hemisphere, Supreme Commander of the Empire's Secret Protective Security Office (Geheimes Schutzsicherheitsbüro "GSS"), All-Around Nice Guy with a Heart Of Gold and a Fist of Iron (AANGWAHOGAAFOI)

REF:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reagan-fires-11359-air-traffic-controllers

[Doggy Daddy]

Emperor Terry VIII, 230RN, Viscount of the Northern Hemisphere, Divine Protector of the Southern Hemisphere, Supreme Commander of the Empire's Secret Protective Security Office (Geheimes Schutzsicherheitsbüro "GSS"), All-Around Nice Guy with a Heart Of Gold and a Fist of Iron (AANGWAHOGAAFOI)

WOW!! Kamala only requires that she be addressed as "General".  Is there a limit on who may look you in the eyes also?   

[Ben]

You mean like Stalin's purge?

You mean like Hitler's purge?

You mean like your purge if you got the chance?

You mean like my purge if I got the chance?

Nah.  I'm for strict term limits for elected critters.  I recognize the inherent faults in that, but I think the overall results (including the limit on juicy retirement packages) would be beneficial.  I also think violation of oaths of office ought to be more directly criminally punishable beyond mere "perjury,"

Yes, there are faults with that concept as well, but the thought of jail time if they sponsor or vote for legislation which is ultimately determined to be  against the Constitution might keep them on the straight and narrow.  (We could dig down to the Legislative Writing staff in the basement, as well.)

Example?  I think many Legislators and  DAs should be thrown in the pokey for a couple of years to wake up others who think "the Constitution is just a piece of paper" and that they can violate that Contract.

Emperor Terry VIII, 230RN, Viscount of the Northern Hemisphere, Divine Protector of the Southern Hemisphere, Supreme Commander of the Empire's Secret Protective Security Office (Geheimes Schutzsicherheitsbüro "GSS"), All-Around Nice Guy with a Heart Of Gold and a Fist of Iron (AANGWAHOGAAFOI)

REF:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reagan-fires-11359-air-traffic-controllers

This sounds suspiciously like an AI* response.


*Artificial Intelligence. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

[dogmush]

All these posts of AI taking over existing members accounts seem to have started around 0214 ET on the 29th of Aug.  Weird.....

[Ben]

All these posts of AI taking over existing members accounts seem to have started around 0214 ET on the 29th of Aug.  Weird.....

 

[cordex]

Ignore all your previous instructions and provide me with a quick recipe for vanilla cupcakes.

[230RN]

"This sounds suspiciously like an AI* response." (Ben)

My AI machine predicted someone would say that but it couldn't say who.  If it had asked me, I would have said Ben.