By Natalia Castro Americans were ignited to head to the polls when President Donald Trump traveled the country in 2016 promising to “drain the swamp,” but the only group that can truly do this is the swamp itself in Congress. Civil service reform rarely gets the media attention that health care, immigration, or other issues receive; Washington D.C. politicians know that and use it to prevent real change from coming. To fix our broken bureaucracy, the American people must demand a more efficient and effective federal workforce. During the Obama administration, news broke of poor performing Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) employees placing veterans on extensive waiting lists, causing hundreds to die without receiving care. The story continued to turn heads when after two years several senior VA officials identified as causing the veteran deaths were still on the job. Americans rallied behind the news in support of our veterans and, as a result, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) led the passage of the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act through Congress to increase management’s ability to remove poor performing employees. According to data retrieved from the Office of Personnel Management’s FedScope, the VA has maintained a firing rate of less than 1 percent…
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