Term Limits

There are a number of term limits proposals on offer regarding politicians.

Then, as James Sherk pointed out in his Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed,

Career employees fill almost all federal jobs. Only 4,000 of the 2.2 million federal employees are political appointees. Career federal employees consequently do almost all the work of government.

Here’s my term limits offer, this one regarding civil servants/career federal employees—and I’d apply it to Federal contract employees, also.

Term limit all of them—say 10 years—and after that term, they’d no longer be eligible for Federal employment in any guise whatsoever. That won’t actually hurt them: with the valuable experience of those 10 years of government employment under their belts, they’ll have no problem finding employment on the private economy.

One more limit: cap Federal civilian employment at one million, including individual contractors. Only the uniformed military should have no cap, but should remain sized to the threat faced.

Think, too, what that would do for us taxpayers, who are on the hook for those already enormous government pensions.

A limit on initial eligibility: a minimum of 10 years of employment in the private sector, unrelated to government work, in order to be eligible for Federal employment or contract work. Yes, that includes entry level secretaries/administrative assistants.

2 thoughts on “Term Limits

  1. Would that also apply to Postal employees? Cause I”m a decade in, and would like to retire/die from my job.
    How about NASA engineers? Would you squander the experience of someone who has done their job for 10 years, and put a fresh college graduate in their place?
    Park rangers? FBI agents?
    Would it apply to companies/employees of places like Lockheed or Boeing? Would General Dynamics have to fire a senior team leader just because they had reached their “term limit”?

    • I did say all Federal employees.
      Of course, the terms would need to be staggered; that would take care of continuity. But after [10] years, entrenchment overtakes the value of experience, which isn’t growing much in value after that, anyway.
      We’ve also seen the damage done by those entrenched employees to the attempts by the elected politicians to implement their policies–and not just in one administration: it’s endemic across administrations.
      [P]laces like Lockheed or Boeing aren’t Federal agencies; they’re private companies.
      Eric Hines

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