I’m with Kimberley Strassel on this one:

Let 2018 be the year of civil-service reform—a root-and-branch overhaul of the government itself. Call it Operation Drain the Swamp.

When Candidate Trump first referred to “the swamp,” he was talking about the bog of Beltway lobbyists and “establishment” politicians. But President Trump’s first year in office has revealed that the real swamp is the unchecked power of those who actually run Washington: the two million members of the federal bureaucracy. That civil-servant corps was turbocharged by the Obama administration’s rule-making binge, and it now has more power—and more media enablers—than ever. We live in an administrative state, run by a left-leaning, self-interested governing class that is actively hostile to any president with a deregulatory or reform agenda. …

If Democrats insist on engaging in class warfare, Republicans should take on the governing class. Washington is now home to a bureaucratic elite, fantastically paid and protected, divorced from economic reality, and self-invested in thwarting conservative policy efforts. Let’s drain the swamp, or at least make it smaller.

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Certainly in our current context, shrinking the government workforce is an unmitigated good.  As Strassel notes, it would allow the elected government to operate as the electorate wants, but it would also immediately increase our freedom as individuals and organizations by reducing government’s ability to control us.  And as an added bonus, it would reduce deficits.

Of course, the people most likely to disagree with my assessment are also the most powerful people in the country.