re: Trump has brought us the lightest federal workforce in American history

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What good is this if our deficits are surpassing $2T?

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Less of my tax dollars getting paid to people who donate to democrats.

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You think the Indian and Muslim contractors they are moving those jobs to

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Link that all of the lost fed workforce is automatically being converted into jobs for Indians and Muslim?

Yeah thought not.

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Trump has done a great job cutting all of those government positions

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The federal workforce (full time, non seasonal) is down roughly 10% since the end of the Biden presidency.

And he did increase it by 6% during his term.

So it's down a net amount of 4% from where it was during Trump's first term.

And he took it down 3% during his first term. It just wasn't a big media topic then.

Voters are responsible for the votes they cast. Leaders are responsible for the actions they take as leaders

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So were those candidates representing the will of the people who elected them, or not?

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this is really more of a philosophical question. I think it’s fair to say that voters elect people who they believe will represent their will. That does not mean voters are personally responsible for staffing choices. Someone who voted for candidate may have supported some or most of their campaign pledges but not all of them. And there’s no guarantee the candidate will actually uphold their campaign promises anyway.

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If so, then they absolutely DID have “something to do with” firing those federal employees.

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Trump voters definitely had something to do with granting Trump power.

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If not, you'll have to explain to me how this representative government thing works. Because if the will of these voters weren't being represented in this case, I don't understand what connection you do think is there between voters and office holders that makes voting significant.

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First, citizens vote on ordinances, taxes, and a multitude of other municipal, parish/county, and state measures. Voting doesn’t exclusively apply to choosing politicians. Voting is significant because Voting is significant because it is one of the primary mechanisms through which citizens participate in governing themselves.

When we vote for representatives, we are choosing who will exercise political power on our behalf. Representation isn’t agency. Elections also give voters a mechanism for accountability. If representatives govern in ways voters dislike, voters can remove them. The fact that voters can punish an officeholder for his decisions actually reinforces my point. The officeholder made the decision; the voter decides afterward whether to continue entrusting him with power.

Does that mean the reason for all the increased spending is because the MIC and others like that are getting all the money?

If this came with decreased spending - then I would get happy.

If this is what you all think limited government is about, then you're fricking retarded.

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The officeholder made the decision; the voter decides afterward whether to continue entrusting him with power.

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But it's not always hindsight, and this particular case is a great example of that.

In this case he voters voted for a guy who specifically said he would reduce the federal workforce. Matter of fact, the promises he made in that regard far exceeded what he's actually done so far in doing so.

How many of the people who voted for Trump in 2024 do you think specifically disagreed with that promise, or thought Trump wouldn't really do it, but voted for Trump anyway for some other reasons?

I'm thinking that applies to damn few of them.

All of the qualifications you made are why the voters are responsible only to a degree. But they are fully responsible for decisions that were made BEFORE they elected the candidate, with their full knowledge, like this one.

If not, then again, there's no connection between the two and therefore there's no point in voting. You can exempt the minor issues settled by state and local direct voting if you want...I thought it was obvious, since it's specifically been mentioned several times, that we were talking about representative voting.