Here’s the background to the question below:
Argentina just elected a new president, Javier Milei, and his first act upon being sworn in? He signed an executive order reducing their government departments from 21 down to NINE.
As Twitchy points out, we have only(!) fifteen FedGov departments (but innumerable sub-departments).
My question to my Readers:
You can eliminate three Cabinet-level federal government departments (to start off with) and all their sub-departments. Which three would you eliminate first?
Mine: Environment (an agency, not a department in the strictest sense of the word), Education (in toto) and Homeland Security (all their sub-departments to be reallocated to their original departments, e.g. Secret Service to Justice, Coast Guard to Defense, etc.).
I don’t know how it works in Argentina, but here in Murka, federal government departments exist at Cabinet level at the President’s pleasure — Richard Nixon, for instance, elevated the EPA’s chairman to Cabinet level by executive order — but departments can only truly be eliminated by Congress defunding them. Nevertheless, play the game.
Secret Service’s orignal dept is Treasury, not Justice….
But yeah, I’d go with Education, HHS, and Homeland Security also… though Interior is standing behind those 3 while jumping up and down, waving its arms, and yelling “Me too! Me too!”
Coast Guard also belongs to Treasury, it started out with revenue cutters collecting tariffs.
It’s awful damn tempting to start with State and Justice, as an example to the others.
FDA.
I got 2 of yours, Education, EPA. BUT dept of energy is a waste and counter to our interests all the time. Keep a nuclear regulatory agency, but only for safety monitoring. No getting in the way of building more nuke power plants.
I’mna liking your choices. Unfortunately though he can start and theoretically trash executive branch departments at will there will always be a judge to issue a stay and off to the courts we go.
Oh and if Orange Man Bad is the one doing it, the entire beltway establishment will come out in droves to thwart him.
No matter who it is the beltway establishment will fight it.
1. They get afraid they are next.
2. Any *reduction in growth* threatens their dreams.
3. Eliminating those jobs puts other trained bureaucrats out on the street, reducing their value.
The proper course of action is to do all of that which is to be done, *in one action*. The screaming will be likely be the same volume, but it will be 15 groups yelling ‘You can’t cut me’, rather than 14 groups yelling ‘You can’t cut him’.
Milton Friedman when interviewed by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institute stated that he would chop the ~19 done to 5!
See here: https://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2011/04/milton-friedman-which-government.html
More important to the economic situation would be to entirely chop ALL gift payments to the NGO’s, Quango’s and riff-raff. Grover Cleveland was correct when he stated that the Constitution does not provide for gifts to the populace, just because. (IIRC, he has the record for Presidential vetoes. May his record by threatened and surpassed!).
The three I would choose:
1 – ATF (BATFE) – as the old saying goes – Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms should be a convenience store, not a guv mint agency
2 – Dept of education. Woke Ism. Let the states educate their own kids. Oh and if you have kids of school age, you pay school taxes. If you don’t have kids of school age or if you don’t have kids at all, no school taxes. That policy will stop the bullshit of all the moms wanting new schools built, laptops for all kids etc. Let people pay for their own crotch fruits. I’m tired of paying for someone else’s orgasms.
3 IRS – And eliminate income tax. It’s the most regressive tax ever. Taxing someone’s labor is akin to slavery. That is theft of anywhere from 10 to 48 percent of someone’s labor / investments. Consumption tax only. And the libs should live consumption tax as rich people purchase more shit and therefore will pay more in taxes. The whole “fair share” bullshit. But done correctly.
Runner up would be Homeland Security. What exactly is this bloated dept securing? This is a redundant agency. Honorable mention as they say.
CoffeeMan,
Solid choices and well thought out.
This is akin to the game of you find yourself in a den of snakes, which snake do you whack first. Um, all of them?
JQ
Vivek is also pushing this idea.
As a point, can we change name of Dept of Defense back to the WAR DEPARTMENT ?
The ones with the 3 largest numbers of employees and or largest budgets.
Department of Education eliminate it
EPA put that in with interior and down size it tremendously
Department of Energy -it would be great if the mission were changed to promote American energy independence.
I’d reorganize quite a bit of it. HHS goes back to the War Department. Coast Guard to Treasury.
JQ
“ Department of Energy -it would be great if the mission were changed to promote American energy independence.”
The idea with the libtards to make us energy Independant is to run the world off of a shitload of dildo batteries (cars, trucks, houses, lawnmowers, snowblowers etc)
The batteries all eventually wear out and need to be trashed – where the fuck do we put them?
The batteries materials are dug up using a diesel excavator
Lithium is dangerous when it burns. And it burns hotter than gas.
And all this shit is promoted from the highest levels to many of the stupid masses. The president tells us electric is the future while he is driven around in an armored fossil fuel powered limo that gets 4 to 8 miles per gallon.
Any plan for “saving the planet” that doesn’t include India and China is like pissing in the wind
You still want the ATF JQ ?
oh God no!! The ATF would definitely get the chop and put them in treasury with no armed agents at all. But they aren’t a cabinet level agency of the Executive Branch.
If I were reorganizing the Federales, I’d actually grow part of the DOJ and make a special section of DOJ to start suing and prosecuting states for infringing on our 2A rights. I’d drag states like Commiefornia, NY, NJ, MA, CT, MD etc into court and sue them for depriving people of their civil rights under the protection of the law. I’d slap the AG’s and politicians in jail as fast as possible.
JQ
In a vain attempt to save the Constitution from the ravages of our massively over-grown federal government I would START with:
Department of Education – This is the root source of many of the problems, since the Fabian socialist/Marxists running it since its inception have as their goals what John Dewey originally wanted, drones who will happily and ignorantly work for government-run corporations. To do this their primary method is to utterly destroy the capability for actual thought on the part of those they indoctrinate.
Department of Housing and Urban Development – They have managed to create far worse urban hell-holes than simple transient poverty does, since they have the almost unlimited power of government force behind them. Give ’em two years to shut down, and in the meantime sell off any government Section 8 housing building to the current tenants since they are ALL currently running at a loss. Let the inhabitants have some skin in the game rather than mooching and see if things improve.
Department of Homeland Security – Break up this monstrosity of Nazi/Stalinism back into its separate components, each of which can be distributed elsewhere. Eliminate completely the TSA, and let the airlines make their own damned security provisions according to what they thing the market will accept (along with complete liability for failures in their security). For example, you could have “Check Your Ammo Airline”, where they allow any firearm as long as it has frangible rounds. At the other end you’d have “Fly in a Tube Airline”, where they’d strip you naked, pack you in a transparent tube for the flight, hook up some utilities, and call it a day. The potential massive liability for failure in their security would lead to a re-design of aircraft, with the cockpit completely separated from the rest of the aircraft; an actual armored bulkhead. Terrorists could take over the passenger section and leave it awash in blood, but the plane would still safely land rather than being made a 250,000 pound guided missile.
What’s really interesting is that every single one of these departments does exactly the OPPOSITE of what their euphemistic titles suggest. “Education” does no educating, “Homeland Security” does no securing. Eventually get rid of them all except Defense (rename it “Department of War”), Agriculture, Interior, Justice, Treasury and State, but strip out the first 5 echelons from the top down and rebuild them completely. Shut them down entirely, and make every single employee justify their position.
‘Tain’t never gonna happen.
Homeland Security, return the different agencies to their original departments. Proof that bigger is not better.
Education, Proven failure.
Health and Human Services. The Chink flu proved the experts were anything but experts.
But, but, but Gerry they last two fund programs at the state and local level that may work. So just have Treasury write a check and lose the overhead and micromanagement of the bureaucracy.
Education, Energy (nuke plants go to Commerce) and Homeland Security (TSA gone, Patriot Act repealed, other agencies go back to pre-formation cabinet departments.)
A close 4th – EPA, with regulations moved back to what was in force ca. 1990, EPA enforcement authority function only moved to Dept. of Commerce or Interior with no regulation writing authority. Any additional regulations must come from Congress, not unelected bureaucrats who need to justify their continuing employment.
5th – the despicable HUD with all its racist grifters.
BTW, all the employees of these deleted agencies and departments get fired! No bloating up other surviving departments with these deadwood bureaucrats.
Last, change the pension multiplier for non-military Federal employees from its current 2.5% to 1.25%.
It’s obscene that some dead wood paper pusher can go to work at Social Security out of high school, work 40 years and retire at age 58 and draw a 100% salary with COLA and benefits for the rest of his life – 20 years longer on average. We cannot afford that. No organization can survive paying its employees full salary for decades for doing nothing. Then again, we are footing that do-nothing bill right now for most of the Fed employees who are “working.”
Golly, I seem to have touched a nerve with this one…
I have to admit, this is the best fantasy fodder since the last time you posted pictures of Salma Hayek.
And, thank you for posting more pictures of the bellisima Ms. Hayek.
I also agree with everyone wanting to get rid of DHS & Education – complete failures, both of them. EPA should go too, but along with a bunch of other agencies and bureaus, like BATFE, FBI, etc.
But I was torn about the third – either HHS or energy, and then I went to the federal departments link and saw their budgets. How does HHS get $200 BILLION more than the Pentagon?!? Pensions for Fauci, et. al.?. DoE only wastes three percent of HHS’s budget. Let START there.
I’ll keep it simple:
The Constitution was ratified in 1788.
It’s reasonable to grant, oh, say, 20 years to figure it out.
Oh, hell, give them 50. Information moved slowly back then.
It’s also reasonable to presume that anything after that is a power grab invented out of thin air.
Therefore: NUKE EVERYTHING AFTER 1838.
That leaves…uh…state and treasury.
I would go for HUD before DHS, but otherwise, yes.
Education – Gone. Nothing but a mechanism to force federal-level indoctrination on the states.
DHS – Gutted. Coast Guard goes to DoD. TSA goes to either DoJ or DoT.
EPA – Gone. Set up branch of DoJ to handle enforcement of existing environmental law only. Let Greenpeace and their ilk handle research.
Honorable mentions:
Office of the Vice President – Gone. Let the state legislatures vote for a presiding officer for the Senate who will break ties and serve as a successor should the President become incapacitated (or give it to the loser of the Presidential election). Past that, the position of VP is worth only slightly more than the individual currently in that position.
Dept. of Energy – Gone. Regulatory and law enforcement would go to the DoJ. Research to be done by those who are interested.
Dept. of Urban Development – Gone. Just…gone.
Just something I remembered. Former Secy of Dept of Education William Bennett said a couple of years ago….since its founding they have spent (just this department mind you) over 1 TRILLION dollars. He noted that the educational achievement of American students has not changed at all.
Department of Ed
Department of Energy
Department of the Interior/EPA
Honorable mention:
Department of Agriculture (apart from clean food inspection)
Department of Homeland Security (because above)
Department of HHS (Because above).
Why the hell is it limited to 3?
Who to Sh*tcan?
DHS: With USCG going back to Treasury (though they were last with Transportation, who is to say that Dept is going to be around too much longer); and CBP also returning to Treasury. The rest of them shown the door.
Agriculture!
Commerce!
Addendum:
Why are we asking who to disband?
We should be considering which three Dept’s we would keep?
State/Treasury/War!
All the rest can have their walking papers – and I’m not to enthusiastic about keeping State in recalling their performance Post WW2.
Milton Freidman thought that the USA needed only:
State (Foreign Affairs)
Justice
Defence
Treasury
He would have moved the Nuclear bit of Energy to Defence, and folded Veterans Affairs back into Defence. Chunks of others would be folded back to Interior. There were 14 departments in 1999
This exercise says nothing about the 19 intelligence agencies….