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before the house homeland security committee, live at 10:00.m. eastern on c-span 3. they are ao scheduled to testify on the same topics berehe senate homeland security committee which will be liven ursday at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3. u n also watch these hearings on our free mobile video app c-span now and online at c-span.org. shington journal" continues. host: welcome back. we are joined by eric katz, senior correspondent for government executive. we are talking about the future of the federal workforce in the next trump administration. guest: thank you for having me. host: tell us about government executive and what you covered. guest: we cover the management and oversight of federal agencies. what federal agencies are actually doing and how it impacts their employees. we can cover congressional oversight of federal employees, and we are read all over

washington. host: your article has the headline, trump vows to "dismantle" the federal. let's talk about how president-elect trump is talking about the federal bureaucracy and what his plans are. guest: he is coming in with a promise to shrink the size of the federal government and the employees who work for it. he has talked similarly in 20 after being elected. he actually oversized light growth in the federal workforce, though most agencies shed employees. he is talking about slashing the agency budget and regulation, wt , and in so doing eliminating

many federal jobs. host: has he talked about cutting programs? is there a plan as to how many federal workers he wants to cut? guest: it is not precise. he hasn't talked about too many programs. has talked about getting rid of the department of education. that would require an act of congress, so it's not clear that would happen. host: let's talk about that a little bit. vivek ramaswamy said that entire agencies could get deleted. that was his word. if they wanted to close down an agency, and that money has already been allocated by congress, what would happen to that funding? talk us through that process. guest: the funding from congressional appropriation, that money, the president does not have that much discretion in revoking that. the president-elect has talked

about the empowerment act, a decades old law that would give the president more flexibility in withholding funds and maybe he could use that, but the legal capacity there is murky. once congress provides the money and authorizes these things it is not really up to the president to say we are getting rid of this agency. when he was the president last time he tried this on a smaller scale with small independent agencies. congress said no, we are keeping them, and they outlasted him. host: vivek ramaswamy on fox news talking about the plans for reduced government. [video clip] >> are you expecting to close down entire agencies like president trump talked about? the department of education, for example? >> we expect mass reductions and

certain agencies to be deleted outright. we expect mass reductions in force in parts of the federal government that are bloated. we expect cuts of contractors who are overbilling the federal government. we expect all of the above. people will be surprised how quickly we are able to move with some of these changes given the legal backdrop that the supreme court has given us. host: he said people will be surprised how quickly we can move. what is he talking about? guest: when he was run for president he also talked about this. his proposal was, certain legal protections that allow them guarantees before they can be fired. that would protect us from having a system where president could come in and install loyalists. he can get around that by having

massive, widespread layoffs. that is what reduction in forces is referring to. he can quickly come in and say that all of these agencies, you are too bloated and we are laying people off. what he is talking about is randomizing it. if your social security ins in an odd number, you are laid off it. if that is an effective way to manage government is questionable. he's talking about laying off half of the doctors who care for veterans, half of the air traffic controllers, half of the civilians that support the armed services. that is something that i don't think would be practical or that congress would allow to go through, but they do have some ability to try to implement these layoffs. it won't be as quick as he talks about, because federal employees have the ability to appeal those and bog down the system a little

bit, but he could do that. host: there are unions in the federal government. talk about how that works. guest: they are obviously going to fight this. in most cases they have collective bargaining agreements in place. they have contracts that in some ways dictate whether these -- the course by which these layoffs would take place, they protect things like flexible work schedules. ramaswamy also talked about eliminating telework. most employees do not telework at all. most to do spend most of their time on site. host: ramaswamy says that most are teleworking and are not actually working. guest: according to the most recent data, that is not true. when you telework, it doesn't mean you're not working. it just means you are not working from an office. even that is, in many cases,

needing to be negotiated through labor agreements. they can try to override that through labor authorities or the court, but it will be a challenge for them to unilaterally try to put that into place. host: i want to read this quote the american federation of government empye and get your reactio make noistake, our union will t stand by and let any political leader, regardles of their political affiliation, run roughshod over the constitution during president trump's first te administration attempted toany our negotiated union contracts come downsize and relocate federal agencies at a great tion and cost the taxpayers, and replace tens of thousands of nonpartisan civil servants with political appointees who would blindly do his bidding. guest: a couple of points.

unions in his first term, tried to kick them out of the office space that they had and reduce the amount of time that employees could spend doing union activity. i expect those executive orders to come back into place quickly upon him taking office. in terms of the last point, that is a reference to what -- an executive order that trump signed before he left office called schedule f. it would take away what we were talking about, the merit-based civil service. instead they could be fired because they were not loyal enough to the president. that was met with a lot of backlash. it never ended up going through, but trump promised to bring it back. we will see where that ends up. host: we will take your calls until the end of the program at 10:00 a.m. when the house gavels in. the numbers are, democrat (202)

748-8000. republican, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. federal employees, (202) 748-8003. in the clip that i showed you, ramaswamy mentioned contractors who were overbilling the government. contractors are a big part of the federal budget. how would that work? has he said anything more about going after contracts? interestingly, elon musk is working with him in the same efficiency department. he is a big recipient of government contracts. guest: i think his contracts are estimated to be worth billions of dollars per year. there is some concern about a conflict of interest. in terms of going after the contracts, these things are

constantly being renegotiated, so any administration has the ability to try to work out better deals for the government. trump talked a little about that in his first term. the federal government has enormous buying power, obviously, because of the scale at which they are operating. you can definitely see some of these contracts be reworked, reshaped. i think every administration tries to do that. it depends what they are willing to go after, what services they are willing to shed if that is up for debate, but they will have opportunities to press federal contractors for what they are building the government. -- billing the government. host: can you talk about previous attempts and what came of them? guest: honestly, it is one of

the oldest tricks in the washington playbook. the come in and say we have a blue-ribbon committee that's going to reduce the size of government and get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.almost every president comes in with some kind of task force to do that. president trump in his first term had a big reorganization plan that was aimed at making government more efficient. that was internal to government where musk and ramaswamy will be outside of government. that came up with ideas that never went anywhere. some big initiatives happened under president clinton and president reagan that would similarly bring in outsiders to come up with proposals that would really make the government more efficient. they had some success. president clinton really did actually reduce the size of the

federal workforce. but some of these proposals never really went anywhere. they would require congressional action. it wasn't just like here is some waste. they were real policy proposals and there was always an appetite for that. host: richard on x wanting to know about the numbers. what is the percentage of america's workforce employed by the federal government? guest: it depends on how you count. there are about 2.1 million federal career civil servants. there are another 600,000 or so that worked for the postal service.and then there is active duty military. it is a fairly small percentage of the overall workforce in america, but it is not nothing. if you're talking about widespread layoffs of these people, and ramaswamy talked about 75%, that is a major economic impact. you're talking about laying off over one million people. host: let's go to sean in

blacksburg, new york. democrat. caller: hello. i just want clarification. i'm not really democrat, i am republican. more independent. clarification. you mentioned the law that he passed before he left the last time, basically made it sound as though he would fire people who were not loyal to him. as i understand it, it would give the ability to fire a federal employee that was not doing the job. guest: so, the executive order, he would apply the new firing capacity to any federal employee who worked in a policy position. it was loosely defined and there was concern that this could be applied on an extremely widespread basis.

what i was referring to is what the administration actually talked about, which was, we have federal employees who are entrenched in these agencies and they are standing in the way of the president accomplishing his goals.when i talk about loyalty, what i mean is that they view much of the federal workforce as adversarial to what they are trying to accomplish, and anyone who stands in their way, this will make it easy to get rid of them. host: project 2025 is said to privatize as much as possible. can you explain the risks and benefits of hiring employees versus contracting services? guest: first of all, there are many things that are inherently governmental. it's quite difficult to contract those out, unless congress were to rewrite those laws. federal contractors generally bill at a higher rate than federal employees.

there is more flexibility there, which is why they are often turned to because they don't have to go through the same hiring processes and they don't have to be responsible for their lifelong pension or health care benefits as career employees, they are responsible for that. there is more flex ability for contractors, but it depends on what you're working on and what you're looking for. host: clarence in north carolina, independent. caller: good morning. how are you doing? my problem with -- you have too much authority in the union, because you have a program like the union i was in, you can work two days and i can get a doctors excuse and come back the third day. you can't fire anybody. what trump did with the v.a., he made it to where you are not

doing your job you can get fired. at the v.a., we had to wait for months to get an appointment. stand in the line, pause on the phone, they ignore you. we have people come in in wheelchairs. good, make them responsible. if you don't make them responsible, you ruin the government. that is one of the main problems. it will never be solved until you get these unions in line. i was there and i saw it. that will make the federal government run so bad and they will never get it right until they get the unions do what they want them to do. host: what do you think? guest: there have been complaints for many years, decades, that it is too hard to fire federal employees because