FLBear5630 said:
historian said:
It's CB primarily the greed and corruption of people in government: politicians & bureaucrats. They have lots of power & little accountability. Sure, there is greed and corruption in plenty of other places: Hollywood, the media, academia, Big Tech, Big Pharma, etc. All of these examples are dominated by the Left. Are conservatives & others also greedy & corrupt? Of course they are! It's human nature. We are all sinners & tend to be selfish. We have to work hard to be otherwise which is one reason Christian's don't always seem very different although they know better. But it's when those qualities are in government that they are most often abused and with greater damage to society.
Government has grown by events, the Depression created a big swell. WW2 created a big swell in Govt. The 60's created a swell in Govt size. etc... Each growth cycle was to solve some problem. It was not people sitting around wondering how to add Federal jobs. Believe it or not, each of the Agencies, Depts, Programs and systems has a mission, function and area of responsibility. Look at Intel, how many do we need? Can they be consolidated without losing functionality? All for such an analysis and restructure.
All I am saying is that it can't be done in a Sharpie based on Vivek's opinion, it has to be data based and make sense. If the Fed is NOT going to do Education, than the States have to be ready to take over that role. How will money flow? If Dept of Transportation is eliminated, are the States ready to do the job? Right now, most State roads and US roads are funded through the Fed. It is MUCH MORE than just doing away with "waste" on day 1 because Elon wants a clearer path for his Companies or Vivek is sick of regulation.
it's grown steadily over the years. Massive growth under Obama.
Tweaking margins is an efficiency exercise, not fundamental change. You have to make big cuts to make big impact. It's why demobilization is not about just dumping or storing excess equipment. It's about RIFs of guys in uniforms in big six-digit numbers. To dump cost, you have to dump people. Plain math.
Here's an example of how we can change the way we do business: When Sid Miller was elected Ag Commissioner, he discovered that the department had the resources to inspect retail gasoline pumps about once every 7 years. Which is effectively not at all. To get to annual inspections, he would either have to 7x his inspection department or......empower subcontractors to do more frequent inspections. He chose the latter. Now, gas stations pay companies who compete for the business of inspecting regulatory compliance on retail gas pumps, and the TxDoA supervises the regulators.
Look at how Tx does vehicle inspections - private businesses are the inspectors, and the State of Tx supervises the inspectors. Tried & true structure.
So much of the federal government could be done this way. There are various manifestations of it already in use. It's a template for how to drastically downsize the DOT, in particular et al..... And that's before we get to the issue of block grants to states rather than programs directly run Federal Agencies.