It’s fair to say that these have been confusing and even traumatic times for U.S. public servants. Federal workers have been attacked as lazy and as ripoff artists — by a White House official. They’ve received a steady stream of “buyout” offers whose legality was initially questioned by the courts.

They’ve watched as entire federal agencies — most notably the people responsible for providing life-saving foreign aid and the people charged with protecting American financial consumers — have been shut down or ordered to stop working. And, of course, the richest private citizen in the world has been busy installing his private-citizen colleagues in key command-and-control positions in the U.S. government.

All of this comes as the Trump administration pursues its goal of cutting and reshaping the federal government — a goal that previous administrations, including President Trump’s first, sometimes highlighted but only achieved at the margins. This time around, Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, in his role leading the “Department of Government Efficiency,” are playing for keeps, even if it means defying court orders.

I’m not going to tally all the agencies and offices and efforts that are being hamstrung or closed outright, mostly because the list will change by the time you read this. Instead, I want to take a step back and contemplate what the effort to dismantle large swaths of the federal government might mean in our states and our communities and on our roads and streets.

To start, I should be upfront: Over six decades in politics and public office, I met more than my fair share of federal employees. There is no question that some of them might have been better employed elsewhere. But they were a tiny minority. Overwhelmingly, I was impressed by the savvy and dedication I encountered — to the specifics of their work and to the idea of public service on behalf of Americans as a whole.

To someone unfamiliar with the extent and reach of the federal government, it can seem remote, impersonal, and bewildering. But in reality, federal employees make our lives better and keep you and me safe by doing concrete, helpful things. They get Social Security checks to the people who need them. They pay attention to what banks are doing so that when we go to withdraw money it’s there in our accounts. Federal workers inspect food-processing plants so we don’t all get sick with listeria or other bacteria. They get money to medical researchers so that your mom has a chance of fighting off a cancer that might have killed her a few years ago. They keep highways and ports running so that our economy doesn’t grind to a halt.

Even the federal employees whose jobs are more internally focused make our lives better, though indirectly. In Slate, a woman who works for the Office of Personnel Management — essentially, the HR department for the federal government — wrote recently, “Unlike HR at a private company — where HR really works for your boss and not for you — our agency actually does work for the American people and the public servants who serve them. When an ICE agent takes their kids to the doctor, it’s OPM that makes sure the doctor gets paid. If a Customs and Border Patrol agent retires, we make sure they keep getting the benefits they have earned over the course of their career. If a federal employee tragically passes away, we make sure their families are taken care of with life insurance coverage. We are supposed to be the backbone of the government, making it so the rest of the government can operate.”

So much is up in the air regarding the federal workforce that I don’t want to venture any predictions about what the next few weeks — let alone months — will bring. But I do know one thing: The administration is bypassing Congress because many of its actions would come in for great scrutiny — and possibly rejection — if they were put to a vote. Congress is failing us by not insisting that happen.

Lee Hamilton, 93, is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at the IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years (1965-1999), representing a district in south-central Indiana.