A slightly less obvious problem with trimming fat is that an amount of fat within any system is good to have if you think long-term.
1. Fat is useful leeway. In critical times, it can be trimmed without otherwise disrupting the operation. Once you have eliminated fat during the good times, you can’t do it in the bad times.
2. A lean system without any fat by definition is tailored to just the current situation. It has much fewer degrees of freedom and is harder to steer to a new course if necessary.
In military term you'd call this "fat" the reserve: an unused percentage of your capacity which you can deploy to exploit an opportunity or to plug a hole.
Now, the difference between those reserves and what you usually get in most administrations is that you're keeping your reserve sharp and not just letting them socialize at the water cooler and on Facebook.
In this case it’s top scientists and people who do the grunt work for them, presumably.
Regarding not letting employees socialize… I cannot speak to any presumed dysfunction in US government, but to clarify my point—employees spending every hour working at 100% efficiency on the exact thing that needs to be done right now is not indicative of a fat system (more like the opposite). Being able to spend a day pondering or exploring or maybe even indeed socializing is.
1. Fat is useful leeway. In critical times, it can be trimmed without otherwise disrupting the operation. Once you have eliminated fat during the good times, you can’t do it in the bad times.
2. A lean system without any fat by definition is tailored to just the current situation. It has much fewer degrees of freedom and is harder to steer to a new course if necessary.