Opinion | Dear Federal Workers: Don’t Quit

Vought’s plan promises to strip you of your job protections, slashing your vital roles and installing MAGA loyalists in your place. In the 1800s, the government was inefficient, incompetent and corrupt because President Andrew Jackson instituted a “spoils system” that awarded federal jobs to his supporters and partisans, rather than qualified professionals who earned their positions on merit. Congress responded with the Pendleton Act, which professionalized government employment and largely eradicated the cronyism of the Jackson days, implementing a merit-based hiring system overseen by the newly established Civil Service Commission. Replacing expert professionals who are motivated by their desire to serve the public with partisans whose primary qualification is their loyalty to the president would cripple the government’s ability to address threats around the world, meet the needs of our citizens and uphold the rule of law. In today’s complicated, dangerous and fast-moving world, we need a nonpartisan civil service focused on serving the American people even more than we did in the much simpler and less hazardous 19th century.