Bad faith cuts vs. Clinton era efficiency efforts

I keep seeing completely bad faith efforts to compare the recent sudden unannounced staff cuts to NIH, FDA, NSF, CDC, etc., and simultaneous large funding cuts, to efforts done under the Clinton administration. This is blatantly comparing apples and orangutans. The Clinton administration eliminated a little over 350k federal jobs over a 7 year period to help balance the federal budget. This was done after a six month review to improve government efficiency before implementation, and were done through the constitutionally mandated pathway in partnership with Congress. Although there was a 25k buyout offer, the majority of the workforce reduction was done slowly over time through attrition (people retiring). Moreover, those who chose the 25k buyout offer, were also offered a fair bit of support to find a new job and a reasonable timeframe to do so. They also implemented a number of efforts ahead of time to alter the process to improve efficiency, so that there wasn’t a loss of critical government function. In contrast the Trump cuts were firings done all at once without any review/talking to the agencies, or any forewarning to minimize the damage done. The people terminated were cut en masse without any regard for what they were working on, or any support to find a new job. Most importantly, they were terminated with a letter stating it was based on performance, when it was clearly done with zero regard for performance (cutting all of those who had the least protections at once without any review). Whereas the Clinton cuts were done in a sensible way, the Trump cuts have been done – whether intentionally or unintentionally through gross incompetence – to maximize the damage to critical government functions. Similarly, the sudden unannounced cut of NIH indirects to 15% - for contracts that had already been signed by the government - is completely unprecedented. I can’t stress this enough: The FDA/NIH employees take less money than they could get in industry because they believed they were doing important work for the country, and because of the stability of the job. Now the new administration has fired a lot of them suddenly without warning or any apparent empathy, has stated it wants to fire a lot more of them soon, and publicly derided the value of their work. Moreover, the new administration is not honoring legally binding NIH research grants/contracts for science to improve health and cure diseases. The implications of this cannot be overstated: The government just went from being the world's most dependable employer and contractor to a demonstrably untrustworthy bad faith actor. No future government employee can ever trust the US government as an employer, nor can any government contractor. That faith can never be restored fully, and will have unprecedented consequences on science, healthcare and the economy.