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Deleting entire cabinet agencies might be a worthy goal, but...
You need Congress to play ball and the margins don't support that mandate.
Especially when you consider the reality of making thousands of normal citizens unemployed from their decidedly non-government jobs.
Those folks are going to be on the phone to their congress creatures.
Making government smaller is never as simple as it seems.
I, for one, am getting fed up with unintended consequences from do-gooders who don't really understand the problem.
Killing a government department might do good, but doing it all at once will produced a kick-back that guarantees that department will be back with gusto.
Never mind that doing it all at once would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Libertarians and globalists are really bad at people.
The drive to eliminate agencies is almost cover for what it's really about.
ReplyDeleteEach of these agencies, FAA, FCC, EPA - the whole alphabet soup - make regulations that have the force of Federal law, and that's like the Executive branch making laws. Congress is supposed to make laws and not the Executive branch - here the Three Letter Agencies. I think the idea started because congress is kind of generalist and they needed specialists or experts because that stuff was too complicated. This is where overregulation comes from.
You know Trey Gowdy on Fox News? He's a lawyer and was a US congress member from South Carolina. In my mind he's kind of an example of the problem. I saw a program once where he explained when he was an undergrad he convinced his advisor to not make him take math. He just couldn't do that stuff. It's OK to basically brag about being innumerate but can you imagine someone on TV bragging about being illiterate?
I'm not saying every lawyer should do Calculus or Differential Equations, but I don't think they ever asked for that. The important part is the problem solving, logical thinking and basic stuff.
An anecdote to support SiG's opinion of the genesis of over regulation:
DeleteOur county had not yet solved a particular problem. The continuing rotation of politicians and consultants got us no closer to the solution.
The call to put an actual scientist on the governing board grew until at last it was done. This scientist with an impressive CV, now elected to an executive position.
The first thing he did was write proposals for more grant money. The second thing he did was to use those monies to fund more studies. Then he, being elected, proposed new policies which said in effect that the result of those studies are the final word on the issue.
That was Part A. Part B was to fund more studies which also involved hiring more consultants. Recalled, he didn't complete his first term. But the policies remained. And they grew in scope which required hiring more 'expert' consultants.