In an ongoing series, the CATO Institute has gone through the Federal Government and taken stock of the different departments and what they do for the citizens. They then produced case by case ways to reduce the size and cost of each department to prove that it is possible to reduce the size of government.
They offer such novel ideas as free market solutions, private industry and State rights. These ideas are foreign to the average left leaning liberal out there because it would remove power from the Central Government. What would we do if the Government was not there to take care of us? Supply our whims with the comfort of Nanny protection. We might actually create (return) to the great country that was fought for and formed back in the Time of our Fathers.
When will we come to understand that caring for people does not need to make them dependant. Helping people does not mean that they should become slaves of the State, voting blocks of needy zombies waiting for thier next fix from the dealer that is the Federal Government.
Please, go, seek and find simple solutions to what has become the biggest problem our country faces.
Department of Energy
from CATO:
"The Department of Energy oversees nuclear weapons sites and subsidizes conventional and alternative fuels. The department has a history of fiscal and environmental mismanagement. Further, misguided energy regulations have caused large loses to consumers and the economy over the decades.
The department will spend $38 billion in 2010, or about $320 for every U.S. household. It employs 16,000 workers directly and oversees 100,000 contract workers at 21 national laboratories and other facilities across the nation. The department operates 35 different subsidy programs."
Spending Cuts Summary
"Department of Energy research activities should be terminated. The private sector is entirely capable of performing by itself research into coal, natural gas, nuclear power, solar power, and other forms of energy. Businesses will fund new technologies when there is a reasonable chance of commercial success, as they do in other private industries.
Federal research subsidies impose a burden on taxpayers, and they can be counterproductive if they steer markets away from the most efficient energy solutions. Furthermore, federal energy research has a track record of poor management, cost overruns, and wasteful boondoggles.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Power Marketing Administrations should be privatized. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should be terminated. Ending all these activities would save taxpayers more than $17 billion annually, as shown in the table.
The bulk of the Department of Energy’s activities are defense-related. Those activities, which total about $19 billion annually, should be moved to the Department of Defense. That would allow for a more transparent presentation of defense costs in the budget, and it would allow the Department of Energy to be abolished."
Timeline of Government Growth
This timeline is incredible but it really took off with President Carter.
1977: At the urging of President Jimmy Carter, Congress creates the Department of Energy, which combines the Federal Energy Administration, the Energy Research and Development Administration, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.5At birth, the department has about 20,000 employees. Today, it has 16,000 permanent employees and about 100,000 contract employees, who work in the national laboratories and other facilities.
Who is John Galt....
The thought of what the states could do with all that money is staggering. States are laying off teachers and our federal education dollars are being used to maintain a bureaucracy!
ReplyDelete