by Rep. Scott Peters

Every American taxpayer — Republican or Democrat — should want to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from our government. And, as a member of the Congress, I’d be happy to help. 

But Elon Musk and Republicans are not fixing the federal government. They’re breaking it.

Beating up government employees has been good politics for some for decades. Ronald Reagan famously declared in his 1981 inaugural address that, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

When I was on the City Council, some elected officials had great political success railing against city workers, even convincing voters to adopt a never tried before ballot measure to cut pensions, which years later was declared illegal. For them, bad policy seemed to make good politics.

But government workers do important jobs, and the across-the-board cuts to new employees are devastating to government function. The military struggles to recruit our nation’s best and brightest to fight the battles of the future because the Department of Defense will never offer a salary that competes with private sector jobs.

This month, Musk fired all of the new probationary employees — the very employees who are most up to speed on artificial intelligence and advances in computer science. Our security has been harmed, and our national credibility as an employer where young people can serve their country is completely undermined.

Last year, when I visited large and small airports, I heard of the challenge in hiring and training enough air traffic controllers. Now, Donald Trump has disbanded the Aviation Security Advisory Committee. Since January 1, 2025, 87 people have died in five major U.S. aviation disasters. Is this really the time to be firing air traffic controllers?

I’ve worked hard on bipartisan legislation for better forest management to prevent catastrophic fires. The fires in Los Angeles had barely stopped burning when Musk fired 3,400 forest service personnel. We were working in congress to get them a pay raise because we were desperate for recruits and retention. Now, we’ve fired the ones we had. And we will feel that loss in the next fire season.

All of this self-sabotage makes our government less effective. And none of this is about lowering federal deficits or debt. The federal workforce accounts for only 4% of the entire federal budget. And it’s not about bloated bureaucracy, either. The headcount in the federal government is the same as in 1970, even after 55 years of national growth.

And the examples being touted as gross misuses of federal funds are provoking but hardly the norm, nor is their dollar value consequential. One that’s getting a lot of attention is $70,000 spent by USAID to fund a play in Ireland about diversity featuring American and Irish singers. That’s the price of a car. That doesn’t move the federal budget needle — it just feeds the political fire.

This is about politics and politics alone. It’s about giving the impression that Trump is shaking things up and acting boldly. But it’s harmful to us Americans. And it’s mean. People are being interviewed for a few minutes by 20-something hatchet wielders who know nothing about their work or its value. People are getting fired without performance reviews by mass emails that say they’ve under-performed.

And even the head of the Office of Management and Budget said he “wants [the bureaucrats] to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as villains…We want to put them in trauma.” What private business could possibly succeed with this attitude toward its employees?

If the Trump administration wants to work on real waste, I’m ready. And if they want to reduce the national debt, maybe don’t pursue their budget plan which will add $5 to $11 trillion to the debt. But so far this DOGE effort is cruel, self-destructive, and ironically wasteful.

Rep. Scott Peters represents the 50th Congressional District, which stretches along the coast from Coronado to La Jolla and inland to Escondido and San Marcos.