Put “federal hiring freeze” on the long, long list of things Donald Trump didn’t realize might be complicated. It turns out that when people leave jobs, things don’t get done because their coworkers can’t magically do twice as much work. And while breaking the government is a major Republican goal, breaking the government in ways their own voters notice might be a little more dangerous.
In mid-March, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin ordered that jobs tied to processing benefits claims wouldn’t be affected by the freeze. But the previous six weeks of no hiring, combined with high turnover and increased claims, pushed the backlog of veterans’ claims to recently top 100,000. The backlog was over 600,000 in early 2013 before the department made a concerted effort to reduce it below 100,000 starting last year. [...]
The Social Security Administration, before Mr. Trump’s administration, had already suffered years of budget cuts and a hiring freeze that began last year. In the last three months of 2016, the agency saw a 48% increase in busy rates and a 38% increase in waiting times for its phone service. Offices also lack enough people to meet their goals in processing disability and retirement checks, according to union officials.
Voters tend to notice when veterans’ benefits and Social Security are messed up and hard to obtain, and even voters who are attracted by a politician posturing about a federal hiring freeze don’t usually want jobs cut that are involved in providing services they use and need.
What’s more, veterans are hit by this hiring freeze both coming and going:
Veterans are heavily affected by the hiring freeze, experts say, because they are often hired by the federal government, and currently make up roughly a third of the federal workforce. Moreover, the VA, which administers benefits to veterans and their families, also has an unusually high number of vacancies to fill—45,000, of which 37,000 were exempted from the hiring freeze, according to Mr. Shulkin.
Of course, this is all just a preview of the Republican agenda. They want that stuff broken—the part they haven’t worked out yet is how they’re going to keep people from noticing that popular government programs went away because of Republicans.