Details are still emerging about what exactly caused the tragic crash Wednesday night between a commercial jet and a military Black Hawk helicopter that is believed to have killed all 67 people involved.
However, multiple news outlets reported on Thursday that the staffing at the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport where the crash took place, was “not normal.” According to the reports, one air traffic controller was dealing with helicopter traffic in the vicinity of the airport at the time of the crash—a job that is usually assigned to two controllers.
While it’s unclear if that is why the two aircraft collided, understaffing at federal agencies could become the norm in the Trump administration.
Donald Trump and his co-president, Elon Musk, are trying to dramatically shrink the size of the federal workforce through the ridiculous and possibly unlawful Department of Government Efficiency in order to use those cost savings to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
Trump and Musk got the ball rolling on that effort on Tuesday, when the Office of Personnel Management sent a government-wide memo offering federal employees who do not want to return to office five days a week—as Trump has mandated—an offer to voluntarily resign their role and receive pay and benefits through the end of this September. (Democratic senators have warned federal employees not to accept the deal, because the buyout offer is untrustworthy.)
The buyout is similar to an offer Musk made to Twitter employees after he took over the company, which resulted in the company’s workforce decreasing by 80%.
But employees told CNBC that Twitter, now called X, is understaffed, with its workforce unable to both maintain the site at current levels while also improving it or building out useful features.
Elon Musk
If Musk successfully spearheads similar cuts in the federal workforce, the lack of staff could have deadlier consequences than merely a buggy social media platform.
A lack of air traffic controllers could lead to flight delays or pared-back flight schedules—which could raise flight prices for consumers. Or worse, understaffed air traffic control towers could lead to accidents like the one we saw on Wednesday.
In June, the president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, which represents many Federal Aviation Administration employees, warned Congress that there are not enough air traffic control workers.
“Having fewer technicians than needed can result in inadequate shift coverage. This means we do not have the right person available to resolve a crisis when it occurs,” Dave Spero testified to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s aviation subcommittee.
A lack of Food and Drug Administration inspectors could lead to deadly food-borne illness outbreaks or contaminated pharmaceuticals.
In September, the Associated Press reported on a shortage of FDA inspectors:
An AP analysis of Food and Drug Administration data shows that agency staffers have not returned to roughly 2,000 pharmaceutical manufacturing firms to conduct surveillance inspections since before the pandemic, raising the risks of contamination and other issues in drugs used by millions of Americans.
The firms that are overdue for safety and quality inspections represent about 42% of the 4,700 plants that are currently registered to produce drugs for the U.S. and previously underwent FDA review before May 2019, the AP found. The plants make hundreds of critical medicines, including antibiotics, blood thinners and cancer therapies.
Too few inspectors for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration could lead to a lack of oversight of workplaces, leading to more preventable accidents. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “A worker died every 99 minutes from a work-related injury in 2023”—a number that could rise if there are fewer workplace safety inspectors.
What’s more, if there are not enough federal employees, it could take longer to receive vital government documents, such as passports or Social Security cards. It could also impact the health care sector if there are not enough federal employees to process Medicare or Medicaid claims.
Ultimately, the harm that a dramatically pared-down federal workforce could bring to Americans is endless.
Signs display an emergency alert above an American Airlines counter at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 29 in Arlington, Virginia.
The Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that tries to combat income inequality and low wages, wrote on Thursday that the United States already has experience with the impacts of having too few government employees.
“This erosion was on full display all through the COVID-19 pandemic. When problems during that crisis required state capacity to resolve, we stumbled badly over vital tasks like screening applicants for unemployment insurance to get their payments to them in a timely fashion, standing-up testing programs, or sourcing and installing air filters and other equipment to allow faster return to in-person schooling,” Josh Bivens, EPI’s chief economist, wrote in a blog post.
Bivens added, “Many frustrations with government today stem largely from a simple lack of public-sector employees available to perform the work in a timely and effective way—from processing asylum claims in reasonable time frames to enforcing consequences for affluent taxpayers who refuse to pay the taxes they owe to holding employers who flout workplace regulations accountable. This frustration with government is not a problem for people like the ones pushing DOGE—it is the desired outcome.”
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