What is in the swamp: Lobbyists or Bureaucrats?

When Trump was running for President he made  much of his intention to "drain the swamp." Robert had always assumed that he meant a swamp full of lobbyists. In contrast, Carolyn believed that what he had in mind were the thousands of low-level and mid-level bureaucrats that every  new President hires as a way to say "thank you" to his biggest campaign contributors. So we both now believe Trump's "swamp" is filled with the thousands of newly hired people in the State Department, Department of Defense, Commerce Department, and the dozens of other departments that make up the continuing bureaucratic structures of government, those who stay while Presidents come and go. Others may have called Trump's "swamp" by different names, like the "deep state" or the "permanent government," but we now believe that they are all referring to the same thing.

By almost any measure, Trump has been slower than any of the recent Presidents (Obama, Clinton, Bush) in filling top-spot and second-spot jobs at 20 agencies. It is not clear if this represents his "swamp cleaning" efforts or simply poor administration. We would like to get more information on the thousands of positions below the top spots, because this is where we will find evidence of the existence of a permanent government. So, there is more work to be done on this question.

We are back. It is not easy finding the number of bureaucratic-type employees in the federal government. Using the Internet, we found out that there are 2.7 million federal civilian employees, from "janitors to judges" as they put it. We are more interested in how many janitors and judges are employed and what are there salaries. The best we could do was to determine that the "entry level" salary for cabinet and cabinet-ranked officials is $205,700. So, it is back to the drawing board. Please send us your information on these questions, as well as ideas for using the internet to uncover the data that is needed.

Update, 11/18/17. On the swamp-draining front. Tonight's TV news reported great anxiety among employees of the State Department about the possibility of "cuts" in personnel in the near future. A spokesperson for the State Department expressed great concern about these rumors and spoke at great length of the importance of the work done by all members of the State Department to further the goals of the United States. The news reporter also commented that the State Department has 25 thousand employees around the world. That is a lot of bureaucrats in the swamp, which obviously extends beyond DC. Stay tuned!