President Trump wants to dramatically reduce government spending with the goal of balancing the federal budget. When Trump entered office, there were more than 2 million employees on the federal government’s payroll. Trump wants to cut that number in half, saving nearly $1 trillion annually. But two overreaching federal judges says Trump must re-hire the workers he just dismissed. What?

Today with all the technology available, it should be relatively easy to modernize federal departments by eliminating workers and having little or no loss in productivity. In other words, half the number of people, using the most advanced hardware, software and artificial intelligence, should be able to get the job done at half the cost.

Trump has put Elon Musk in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk with his band of hundreds of “techno nerds” can accomplish this. After all, Musk bought Twitter, reduced the work force by 75%, added improved technology and the rebranded X operates very well today.

But two federal judges, who may not have jurisdiction, have intervened. They said that Trump can’t remove workers and that he must rehire tens of thousands.

According to The New York Times:

One of the judges, James Bredar of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, also temporarily restrained the government from carrying out any planned “reductions in force” across the 18 agencies affected by his order. That includes a cut the Education Department announced this week that would leave it with about half the staff it had when Mr. Trump took office.

The other Judge, William H. Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, directed the Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Defense, Agriculture, Energy and Interior Departments to re-instate previously dismissed workers.

Trump, who vows to obey court orders, must reinstate these workers. The problem is that once their jobs are fully automated, the additional workers will not add additional output. And may, indeed, reduce the output.

The reason is simple. Economists will say that adding additional workers beyond the efficient level could result in negative returns. In other words, the additional workers will likely reduce the total output in a system that is designed to function with fewer employees and more technology. They will simply be in the way.

If that is the case, the best thing to do with the workers that Trump has been forced to rehire is to have them dig holes and fill them up again. That of course results in zero output. But zero output is better than negative output.

The reality is that the federal government must become more efficient and spend far less money to come close to balancing the budget. Musk and his workers will provide the necessary technology to do this.

In a private company this is done constantly. Corporations always try to maximize profit. To do that they will charge the highest price that consumers are willing to pay, and they must produce at the lowest possible cost.

If they don’t keep their costs minimized another competitive firm will produce at the lower cost, perhaps reduce the price and take market share away from the inefficient firm.

The federal government is not motivated by profit, so they, up until now, had no incentive to reduce cost. Further, in most areas, the federal government has no competition, so again there is no incentive to reduce cost. The result is that government costs continue to rise. Trump wants to end that.

Trump is fully committed to reducing government spending. He will reduce the total federal government workforce by 50%. The judges that attempt to stop him will win only temporary reprieves. These cases will eventually get to the Supreme Court where common-sense logic says the lower court decisions will be reversed.

Let’s hope that happens relatively soon. In the meantime, to avoid negative returns, any re-hired workers should simply dig holes and fill them up again. Given that Trump is at least temporarily forced to rehire unneeded workers, that is the only task that will not result in lost productivity.

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Michael Busler is a public policy analyst and a professor of finance at Stockton University in Galloway, New Jersey, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in finance and economics. He has written op-ed columns in major newspapers for more than 35 years.