Thread by @Impeach_Today

I haven’t seen commentary on the proposed merger of the Labor and Education departments. Fortunately, I’ve executed a few corporate mergers, and I need to reveal Trump's latest lie. [Thread]

(Tomorrow: The good and evil of this merger)

washingtonpost.com/politics/white…

Some history: The elimination of ED has been a GOP dream since Reagan. Even DeVos said:

One favorite argument is that ED is unconstitutional because it’s not in the Constitution.

The same could be said of NASA and the new #SpaceFarce, however. 🙄

conservativereview.com/news/5-smart-r…

Another argument is that ED is huge. By headcount, it’s the smallest federal department at 4,000 ppl. Yes, it has a big budget at $68B (FY18), 95% of which is given to students (grants, loans) and local schools. Plus, ED headcount is down 10% since DeVos began her destruction.

So why is Trump’s proposing a this merger? The current proposal says the benefit will come by way of cost reduction (via cost synergies).

But that’s where things get grizzly and the lie emerges.

So, what do these departments do? Probably not what you or DeVos think. After all, should doesn’t even know her department’s mission statement:

(Hint: it deals a lot with CIVIL RIGHTS.)

So here are their mission statements.

And here are their org charts. Of note, the majority of Labor's staff sit in the area that produces economic data and research.

So back to those "cost synergies."

For potential cost synergies to exist, two organizations need to perform similar tasks.

I just don’t see a lot of task-based overlap in this case based on the org charts AND review of their current programming.

They both do some jobs training programming (but those programs are dissimilar). Potentially they’d save on similar back-office work (e.g. HR). But there’s no significant duplication of work; ED is, frankly, just too small.

The cost of the executing the merger could total in the BILLIONS, per a comparable estimate.

The cost of the consolidation would not likely be recouped anytime soon through realizing cost synergies. There is just too little overlap.

HERE IS WHERE WE SEE THE LIE.

So a few initial conclusions about the proposed merger:

CONCLUSION 1: the stated rationale for merging the Education and Labor departments is a lie.

CONCLUSION 2: There are no significant cost synergies to be found here. There's too little task-based duplication of work.

CONCLUSION 3: Trump just wants to say he eliminated ED, a longstanding GOP dream #MAGA

Tomorrow I'll discuss the good and evil of this proposed merger. Follow to not miss out!

UPDATE: Proposal details revealed look just as bad as I predicted. Again, this is not about cost synergies. More discussion in tomorrow's thread!

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