Meat Cleaver Reax*

This column was published February 21, 2025 in the Manhattan Mercury.

---

The election hits home. At the exact same time they’re trying to stand up a system to protect our health, personal and economic, from untold disease ravages, some 30 employees at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan get the e-mailed pink slip.

Thanks for coming in. Don’t let the tornado-proof, biosecurity level-4 door hit you in the hindquarters on the way out. 

NBAF answers to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which answers to the president. Dozens more USDA jobs in Kansas also got the axe, many from a sub-agency called the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which exists to…  wait for it… conserve natural resources.   

“Is this what you voted for?” The hue and cry from those who did not, comes swiftly and angrily.

I hope you’re sitting down.

It is exactly what they voted for.

For decades, it’s what Republicans have been voting for. Eliminating waste, streamlining systems, creating efficiencies. Most bang for the taxpayer buck. Ronald Reagan sang this siren song for decades. “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

With the best of intentions, political skills, intellectual capacity, hearts filled with passion, imaginations brimming with innovation to root out waste, the Republicans of days gone by could not pull it off.

I suspect the fact that Trump can, will only feed the beast.

The pre-MAGA GOP couldn’t get it done, in part, because of checks and balances. Pushback from a Congress, who when they saw that eliminating waste meant pain for the folks back home, did what members of Congress do, or at least what they did before fealty threw a sharp elbow and knocked constituent service to the sideline.

Can the government employees who remain at NBAF and NRCS work harder and multi-task? Can creating the need to work harder and multi-task produce new opportunities to design and implement processes to make the government’s role in conserving natural resources simpler? Is that what the new administration is counting on and planning for?

Yes, yes and somehow, I doubt it. We have sufficient data to know that critical thinking is not a motivator with this crowd. The very notion of job cuts at both NBAF and NRCS proves it. NBAF can save your life. Conservation is important, but in the BSL 4-driven scheme of things…  

Ask any Kansas farmer who has dealt with the USDA bureaucracy. They’ll use words like “cumbersome” and “challenging.” And those are the polite ones. In a perfect world, those words would serve as the foundation for a broad, thoughtful, plan to streamline. Why, you could write the executive summary right now. Even before the listening sessions.     

These recent federal government job cuts are not surgical, nor are they the result of a careful program analysis. They’re a meat cleaver.

I have detected and categorized three sets of reaction. First, those who did not vote for this and knee-jerk to the sky is falling. Next, those who did not vote for this, exercise some restraint of keyboard, and however naively, see it as an opportunity for real reform. Finally, those who did vote for this. Exactly this and nothing more.

I’m in the second camp. I still struggle with the short-sighted isolationism, utter lack of a moral compass and rampant narcissism.

Those who lost their jobs are no doubt dedicated, lovely people with a passion for their work. They’re probably also just the first wave. I have no inside dope, just observations based on a career’s worth of journalistic instincts.

Precisely because of this, my confidence level that meaningful simplifications and efficiencies will result is not high.

But that’s just me.

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in The Mercury, and he hosts ‘Within Reason,’ weekdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN. Follow his writings at mikematson.com

---

*Reax. n. Journalistic shorthand for reaction or reactions.