comes or reduction in force you see the best and Tancredo stated, that when people left the Department of Education no one would notice. I remember when I worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs, we had a program coordinator a GS-11 position. When she retired nothing was different. Nothing needed to be done and the program worked just as well without her. The Department of Veterans Affairs has two types of people. One group loves the veterans and are willing to take lower pay to work with veterans. These folks ended up being overloaded with patients trying to get to them and would go the extra mile to help a veteran. Their are others who couldn’t find or keep a job on the economy because of their treatment of patients. They get a job at the VA are hard to find, treat patients poorly. Veterans then migrate to the providers who care for them. In time, a small patient load is left and the provider is never available or hidden. When a buyout occurs the brightest and best leave because they are burned out. They have no problem finding work at another hospital. The ones left are the poor providers since they couldn’t get a job on the outside due to there reputation.
My clerk was one of these. He treated vets poorly, he wouldn’t call a vet if I was out or sick. He let them drive and then told them. He would make copies sideways so you wouldn’t ask him to do anything for you. It was better to do it yourself.
The VA and other Government organizations would work if you could weed out the poor worker. The problem is a poor performance report comes a visit from the Union Rep or an EEO complaint. You them get told to change your evaluation. Then when it is time to reduce forces you didn’t have the documentation to remove someone.
So when Tancredo says you could replace the Department of Education with a potted plant he is not exaggerating. Education should be turned back to the states.