HHS Job Cuts: Pork or Purge?

Rescuing the nation from bureaucratic bloat.

(Photo by J. David Ake/Getty Images)

Mainstream media opposition to government accountability has shifted to alarmist attacks against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s days-long tenure at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The nation’s debt tops $36 trillion as federal spending and debt service devour the economy like a ravenous dragon. Recalcitrant Democrats scream tyranny and suddenly discover the US Constitution they have tarnished for four inflation-fueling years. Cost-cutting at HHS is portrayed as a threat to health and an illegal purge. The shameless carnival show exhibited at Kennedy’s confirmation hearings continues unabated by the same cabal of misinformation-spewing media shills bent on feeding the bloated bureaucratic beast that requires radical gastric bypass surgery to avert financial collapse.

Reining in the Spendthrift Reign

The rate of Biden administration’s profligacy appeared to be fiscal sabotage. The “Inflation Reduction Act” was really about renewables manufacturing (if Joe Biden is to be believed). Obscene payments to foreigners in the country illegally, hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars frittered away on the Ukraine conflict, excessive monetary flushing on COVID “relief” payments, obdurate determination to cancel student loans despite court rulings this was unconstitutional: The spending by the Biden Democrats was as historic as it was unsustainable.

Donald Trump petitioned the electorate for a mandate to close borders, reduce government waste, and make America healthy again by reclaiming captured regulatory agencies from their corporate captors. “No, this is a horrible crime against America’s poor!” howl the usual talking heads of the media establishment. Yet only their enrapt, Orwellian prole crowd has stayed tuned in to this out-of-tune drivel.

Recall that President Bill Clinton axed 426,200 federal jobs during his tenure, according to the director of his initiative, Elaine Kamarck. The nation under Clinton enjoyed robust dot-com economic growth, yet Clinton also slashed benefit programs with his bipartisan “Welfare-to-Work” bill (the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act”).

A Fiscal Course Correction

Those good ‘ol days of fiscal conservatism under Democratic reign were discarded under the “Change you can believe in” tenure of Barack Obama, who bailed out a corrupt Wall Street during the 2007-2008 financial collapse while also bailing on American homeowners who became RV owners living in Wal-Mart parking lots by the tens of thousands. Recent revelations by DOGE reveal that the pork-fat spigot of Biden’s leveraged spending spree was not only outrageous but outlandish.

A February 19, 2025, statement by one of the media’s favorite targets, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), was somber if sobering news for Americans whose future taxes must repay the damage. Greene reported that fraud in government has achieved astronomical excess, enabled by “career bureaucrats who do not enforce Administration policies to reduce fraud and improper payments.” She continued:

“Federal agencies reported an estimated $236 billion in improper payments in 2023 alone, and $2.7 trillion since FY 2003. In addition, the Government Accountability Office estimates the Government could be losing between $233 and $521 billion annually to fraud.”

The Titanic Averts a Fiscal Iceberg

This iceberg of fraud and fiscal sabotage would have remained hidden below the surface had Kamala Harris continued the corrupt carnage. Instead, the career bureaucrats who aided now-shrill Democrats accrue gold-plated deckchairs on their personal Cayman Island yachts are scurrying like terrified rats who planned to sink the titanic American economy but got caught in the snapping trap of DOGE. Now they gnash their teeth at HHS and Bobby Kennedy in empty fury: The man behind the curtain has been revealed. The Great Oz can no longer peddle baubles by fiat.

Claims that HHS has been gutted or “entire agencies eliminated” are the dying lies of the “Trump is a Nazi” desperados. Backed into a corner, those claiming Kennedy is a saboteur have run dry of credibility as that ancient power of fact has come to the fore. As Fox reported:

“A senior Trump administration official told Fox News Digital that there have been 6,000 departures from HHS since Jan. 20, Inauguration Day. The agency, however, still employs nearly 6,000 more people than it did in 2019, including more than 2,000 employees at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relative to 2019 numbers, and 1,200 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“Hiring at HHS ballooned between fiscal year 2019 and 2024, the senior Trump administration official said, with 17% more full-time employees by 2024….”

HHS Is A-Okay

The good ‘ole boy Democrat frat party on the taxpayer tab is facing the DOGE hangover. Bald-faced lies about HHS just expose the naked empire’s junk-bond farce. Taxpayers have had their fill of such swill: The jig is up for the chittering, chattering class.

Clinton cut federal jobs with the cooperation of federal unions; now unions file lawsuits to prevent the just and inevitable, while academic unions protest in tandem futility in front of HHS offices, proclaiming a “National Day of Action.” But the real action is at DOGE: The bank robbers are holed up in the vault while the DOGE posse gathers numbers – accounting records and bank accounts.

Employees terminated at HHS were probationary newbies, recent hires for whom long-term employment was not promised. Donald Trump has offered much more generous golden parachutes to departing federal employees than Bill Clinton, even adjusted for inflation. The HHS lay-offs did not include key personnel for emergency preparedness, CDC, or other HHS divisions, employees working on Medicaid or Medicare, or those reviewing drugs or conducting inspections at FDA. Employees working on refugee resettlement were also exempt from the pork-culling. The “sky-is-falling” alarums from the media fall on mostly no-longer-credulous ears that prefer to hear the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

DOGE Drowns the Lies

HHS has not been gutted of competence but of corpulence. What Kennedy threatened during his confirmation hearings has come quickly to fruition: “We will create an honest, unbiased, science-driven HHS, accountable to the president, to Congress, and to the American people.”

Fortune claimed, “Nearly every federal worker has been offered buyouts, and mass terminations have begun.” But White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller set the accounting record straight:

“By the end of former President Joe Biden’s administration, there were roughly 23.5 million local, state and federal government employees. The federal government employed over 3 million people in November 2024, standing close to its peak of 3.4 million employees in May 1994.”

Technological advances in the dot-com boom permitted increased government efficiency. Biden’s spend-for-all smorgasbord seeded pork like a fake-meat factory. Today, DOGE uses technology to clean out the fat-cats and bring home the bacon.

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)