Random Arbitrary RIF’s Drive the Initial Makary Agenda
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Smaller government is possible, albeit not always warranted. In theory, you could RIF 3,500 FDA employees and agree to x number of buy-outs, and still have an agency that could competently carry out a portion of the agency’s vast responsibilities. However, it would be extraordinarily hard to do and impossible without a well-developed plan for what functions can be downsized and which employees eased out.
On the other hand, if the RIF’s are random and arbitrary, which seems to be the case, then we should stop wasting our time trying to understand the Administration’s RIF/downsizing strategy:
Random arbitrary RIF’s do not make any sense; by definition, they cannot.
There is no actual plan, only slogans about downsizing government, saving taxpayers’ money, and eliminating people who are allegedly overpaid and underperforming.
Government is not a business. But even if it were, no company would downsize without a plan for staying in business afterward (or a plan for liquidation).
The current effort is not the only way to downsize government (my summary of the 1990’s effort here concludes that “federal employees would support downsizing if it is planned, paced, and predictable.”)
Random arbitrary RIF’s is not an efficient or appropriate way to address the problem of large, unsustainable government deficit spending (my budget reconciliation primer).
When you stop trying to rationalize what is going on, you get to the simple but startling truth: random, arbitrary RIF’s are intended to:
1/ destroy government credibility and expertise,
2/ demoralize remaining staff,
3/ make it near-impossible to recruit experts in the future; and
4/ reduce staffing levels to where competent program performance will be challenging if not impossible.
It feels like such a big leap to such a radical conclusion—that the mind wants to deny the possibility.
However, you do not downsize the DOGE way if your only goal is a smaller, more efficient federal workforce that serves the American public and its needs[1].
What Comes Next?
In my RIF FAQ, I discussed the need to protect “review teams” and “inspection teams” and not just reviewers and inspectors. Preliminary, possibly unreliable reports suggest that the reviewers did okay and the inspectors not so much. Even with reviewers, however, I doubt that the teams were defined broadly enough to keep functions intact and unaffected.
Thus, the single most pressing priority for Commissioner Makary is figuring out what FDA can still do, given a workforce that is at least 18% smaller through RIFs and closer to 23% smaller if voluntary separations and buy-outs are included. Equally important, he will have to figure out what the FDA cannot do or cannot complete in a specific timeframe…and address statutory, Congressional, and stakeholder concerns.
This assessment is far more complicated than it might seem. In an earlier column, here, I pointed out that employees are divided into a large number of job categories that reflect education and experience. A PhD biochemist, a biostatistician, a consumer safety officer, a communications specialist, and a laboratory technician are not interchangeable.
Further, funding sources are not always interchangeable. While there is no such thing as a user fee employee (FDA, Lay-offs, and User Fees Explained), an employee’s salary and benefits can only be paid by user fees if their responsibilities are creditable as fulfilling a user fee supported activity.
After realigning functions and teams (by matching responsibilities with available personnel), the Commissioner must re-start the engine of production. FDA employees are incredibly talented and amazingly committed—but no one could have maintained full productivity from the February 14 lay-offs through now. It will take time for teams to re-form and work-arounds figured out. Then it will take still longer for productivity to even approach former levels.
This is far, far from a full list of what will need to be done. Even my limited list presumes that “humpty-dumpty” can be put back together again.
A Thought on Commissioner Makary’s Situation
FDA needs to be able to incorporate good policy, good medicine, and good science into agency decisions. We know that this is what Dr. Makary intends. However, he did not necessarily sign on for random arbitrary RIF’s and such a substantially diminished staff.
Nonetheless, it falls to him to make the best of the situation and re-create the the most effective FDA he can. As appropriate, we all need to be rooting for him and contributing to his efforts to restore FDA’s credibility as the world’s premier food and drug regulator.
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The post-RIF world of FDA will provide many more twists and turns….and I will be offering analysis and insight on an ongoing basis.
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It was done successfully in the 1990’s with a minimum amount of disruption and only modest RIF’s that were implemented at the end of the process. See my analysis of the “Reinventing Government” initiative.
I am hearing that there are more RIF’s coming, maybe later this week or next week. I view this as plausible but unsubstantiated. If true--and the names are not already determined--then it is an opportunity for Dr. Makary and his team to think strategically and practically about maintaining functional teams.
We have heard 900 to 1000 buy-outs, but we have no way to verify the accuracy of that number.