WASHINGTON — Thank God President Donald J. Trump has decided to allow his Senate confirmed Cabinet members to take greater control of the manpower needs in their respective departments. We must pray that the approach and method used will be prudent and in concert with eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse while recognizing the importance of America’s greatest resource, its people.

You do not have to be a rocket scientist to understand this basic fact – more workers, not fewer workers, is the easiest way America can start to substantially reclaim its financial strength. America cannot pay its bills without borrowing money. This is a silent crisis.

We need more tax revenue, which we would get when we employ more workers. Also having more workers would help sustain our Social Security system as more people would be contributing to the fund. More jobs for American workers can improve the spirit of America which increases Americans’ confidence in the economy. Firings are depressing.

As further proof, the last time America balanced its budget the workforce participation rate was about 67%, now it is barely at 62%. That difference in tax revenue – federal, state, and local – when factored into having fewer people in need of federal entitlements, would be a major step toward balancing the budget. We would no longer have annual trillion-dollar deficits, tacked onto our already $36 trillion national debt. This is just simple math.

Conversely, Elon Musk’s firing tactics and any other mass layoffs could inadvertently lead to a recession, one that Musk and like-minded officials would cause.

As we approach a very holy season for Jews and Christians, I cannot help but reflect upon the dubious similarities of Musk’s acts and those of notorious leaders in Biblical history.

If you believe the word of God is written or reflected in the Bible, Sirach chapter 34 versus 26 says that “ending a person’s living/job is the same as killing a person.”

In Biblical history we have seen three instances in which leaders randomly, with an intent that was clearly misleading, decided to end the lives of all children under the age of two. The first person to do this was Pharaoh. The story was part of the Book of Exodus. The Pharaoh’s sole real intent was to kill someone, who, in his eyes, represented a future threat. His name was Moses. That attempt failed.

In that same Book of the Bible, a new Pharaoh, while totally frustrated with Moses’ demand that the Hebrew people be freed from slavery, ordered the killing of all first-born Jews. This led to one of the greatest stories in the history of man – the Passover. God killed those who followed Pharaoh, while sparing or passing over those who followed God.

The third instance occurred thousands of years later. Herod, fearing a person who threatened his power, ordered the killing of all babies under the age of two in a certain part of his kingdom. They did. But, like Pharaoh thousands of years before, Herod also failed to find and eliminate this person. We had the birth of Jesus Christ. The rest is history.

es, sweeping pronouncements and attempts to end lives – as the Bible would say, “ending the livelihood/jobs” – seemed to have backfired and rarely rendered the intended results.

Well, do we have a new Pharaoh or new Herod? Do we have a 21 st-century man who has as his mission to indiscriminately, for possibly unknown and nefarious reasons, do the same thing? He has ordered the firing of all federal workers with less than three years of service. He has in a metaphorical sense, as the Bible would have it, killed all of them.

In none of these examples do people today, or those of the past, deserve these actions. Some of today’s victims were merely handed a “form letter” stating their performance was not acceptable, without any proof of that claim. This could seriously impair their ability to qualify for unemployment compensation while they search for a new job.

A person who gets fired in this way could take up to a year or more to find comparable employment. Their lives are seriously disrupted. But who cares? I say that facetiously.

The claim from Musk and like-minded people is that many federal workers are not working or even showing up for work. Yeah, right.

While displaying little to no respect for the millions of Americans who have made public service a proud and honorable profession, ironically, Musk’s companies have received tens of billions of dollars from the federal government over the years in federal contracts.

Let us also recognize that there are scores of Fortune 500 companies that provide services or products for our country that would vanish or be critically harmed – in essence “fired” – if they too did not receive federal dollars. In their case this help is known as federal contracts. And those federal dollars go to the companies which they use to pay their employees.

Federal workers or federal contract workers both get their money from Uncle Sam. We are all in this together as Americans. And there is nothing wrong with either. Scrutinizing one, federal workers, but not the other, federal contractors, is simply wrong and shortsighted. Greed, not laziness, drives folks. Remember the $500 toilet seat and $20 aspirin pill that corporations charged the government?

It is easy for Musk to demand the firings of federal workers. But the real challenge here is to scrutinize the “real money,” the trillions in federal funds that go to federal contractors. Are we in a laissez-faire era for those holding federal contracts? Remarkably, waste, fraud, and abuse for these folks are not part of the discussion.

The American people elected Trump for president. We did not choose Musk as co-president whose proven disdain for federal workers may pale in comparison to his dislike for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.