One of the promises President Trump made to American voters is that he would shrink the federal government. With the latest announcement that the National Security Council is set to lose as many as 330 people, the President is closing in on that goal.

The National Security Council has been at work in Washington, D.C., since 1947. Congress created it at the beginning of the Cold War to coordinate policy between the various government national security entities, such as the military and the CIA. 

President Truman was unenthused, resenting Congress's impingement on his ability to handle foreign affairs. Nevertheless, he accepted its existence and Truman, followed by subsequent presidents, kept manipulating its shape and make-up to help make it a more congenial partner when working with the White House to defend American interests against overseas actors.

In the wake of 9/11, the NSC was reorganized, with a new Director of National Intelligence replacing the head of the CIA at the NSC's helm and taking a place in the President's cabinet. Under President Obama's watch, the NSC grew in size and power, with as many as 450 people assigned to it when he merged the NSC and White House staff supporting the Homeland Security Council into a single National Security Staff.

When President Trump assumed office, he set about again reorganizing the NSC structure and chain of command in significant part to cut down on the number of people mandated to attend various meetings.

President Trump is once again re-working the NSC, this time to bring it in line with his promises to make the federal government smaller and more responsive, as well as to break the flow of sensitive information NSC staff to the media:

The White House National Security Council staff is being downsized sharply in a bid to improve efficiency within the policy coordinating body by consolidating positions and cutting staff.

A second, unspoken thrust of the overhaul is a hoped-for end to what many critics see as a string of politically damaging, unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information. Leaks of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders and other damaging disclosures likely originated with anti-Trump officials in the White House who stayed over from the Obama administration, according to several current and former White House officials.

White House National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien is leading the NSC reform effort.  He revealed in a recent interview with The Washington Times that 40 to 45 NSC staff officials were sent back in recent months to the agencies where they originally worked, with more likely to be moved out.

The move will also backtrack from Obama-era changes that turned the NSC, originally an advisory committee, into a significant policymaking agency:

“The NSC staff became bloated during the prior administration,” Mr. O’Brien said. “The NSC is a coordinating body. I am trying to get us back to a lean and efficient staff that can get the job done, can coordinate with our interagency partners, and make sure the president receives the best advice he needs to make the decisions necessary to keep the American people safe.”

In the Obama administration, NSC officials wielded enormous power. NSC staff members were known to telephone commanders in Afghanistan and other locations in the Middle East with orders — a violation of the military’s strict chain of command, said military officials familiar with the calls.

“I just don’t think that we need the numbers of people that it expanded to under the last administration to do this job right,” Mr. O’Brien said.

This downsizing is consistent with other White House efforts to trim the federal government, something that will help with both costs and efficiency. Betsy DeVos has cut 600 staff positions at the Department of Education, although that's a decrease of only 14%. President Trump also relocated two resarch departments in the Department of Agriculture from Washington, D.C. to Kansas City, bringing them geographically closer to the agriculture they study. Government workers were not happy:

The vast majority of staff at ERS and NIFA declined to relocate to the new office space in the Midwest. USDA said it plans to aggressively hire new employees to fill the absences.

While one can be sympathetic to people who resist having to uproot their lives, government work was never meant to benefit the bureaucrats. It should, instead, work for the taxpayers, by providing core services efficiently and cheaply