Donald Trump crackdown on American Bureaucracy stirs alarm
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WASHINGTON: A hiring freeze. Curbs on communications Denunciations of "waste, fraud and abuse." US officials are alarmed by the launch of President Donald Trump´s drive to rein in the federal bureaucracy.
Three days after his inauguration, the Republican billionaire on Monday signed an executive order instituting an immediate 90-day freeze on the hiring of federal officials "except for the military."
Positions currently vacant will remain unfilled until the administration inaugurates a promised program to reduce the federal workforce.
The measure may affect tens of thousands of additional jobs filled by employees who step down over the next three months -- a significant impact on a civil service numbering some 2.1 million that has remained more or less constant over the last eight years.
Trump´s directive caused consternation in Washington, prompting a flood of comments on the news site govexec.com -- an outlet for top government executives -- where hundreds of readers alternated between anger and incomprehension.
"It´s really dumb," said Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton´s running mate in the presidential election last year. The Democratic senator represents Virginia, home to many civil servants who work in neighboring Washington.
"If you read the executive order, you would think, wow, the federal workforce has run wild!" Kaine told AFP.
However, he added: "It hasn´t grown at all during the Obama administration. The federal workforce today is the smallest it´s been as a percentage of the nonfarm workforce in 70 years."
The United States employed 2.2 million civil servants in 1946, when the country´s population stood at 141 million.
From 2000 to 2016 -- when the population reached 324 million -- the federal workforce grew from 1.8 million to 2.1 million, an increase in absolute numbers that Republicans portray as an explosion.