For the congressional budget writer looking for ways to trim federal spending while striking a blow for less intrusive government, one good place to start is that overstuffed warehouse of post-9/11 panic: the creepily named Department of Homeland Security.
As Reason Magazine notes, the 20-year-old department has done very little to make anyone safer. And cost a lot — in both tax money and individual liberty — doing so:
…critics of DHS noted from the start that it didn't actually reduce bureaucracy or streamline much of anything. It just added a new layer of red tape on top of existing agencies while creating new ones, such as Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—both of which have become legendary for callousness, ineffectiveness, and root-level failures.
Similarly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has gone from catastrophic failure in New Orleans to catastrophic failure in Puerto Rico, updating its longstanding “stumblebum reputation” for the 21st century.
There's much, much more at the link.
The bottom line: rather than help DHS bureaucrats celebrate their 20th anniversary with a card, a cake and a hearty handshake, the Department should be getting the axe and its component piece returned to the fiefdoms from which they came.
Except for the Transportation Security Administration. That sad excuse for security theater should be abolished even if the rest of the DHS is, somehow, allowed to stand.
There's just not a security need, business case or even paranoid fantasy that demands we keep spending money on an agency that feels up grandma:
…the TSA rightly looms large in the public imagination as a make-work program gone horribly wrong. Notorious for forcing mothers to test their own breast milk, scaring children, and pantsing the elderly, the TSA spends as much as $667 billion per life saved. On its 10th anniversary, two conservative Republican members of Congress even denounced the TSA, saying the degraded security theater it imposed on travelers did not improve on the safety protocols that were in place before 9/11.
Abolish it, and let us keep our dignity intact and shoes on when we travel. At least until we're squeezed into an economy seat next to the lavatory.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Yeah well, even a blind hog roots up an acorn every now and then.
As I recall, DHS was scoped as a bureaucracy being built on another bureaucracy!
I agree, but for entirely different reasons. Frankly, one of the main problems with the DC Bureaucracy is Overlap, and while the concept of a Department overseeing all might seem like a good idea, in retrospect, it’s only made it worse. So it was tried, it didn’t work, so end it and let’s try just getting rid of the overlap between agencies.
First, the Patriot Act must be schitcanned.
It’s time to universally restructure the bureaucracy. All of these departments were started at some point, and no one says anything is permanent. Wasn’t the CIA the OSS earlier? Who is to say they can’t be fundamentally changed? It’s time for a President to make the DC area real estate the cheapest in the country.
OK then scrap these:
EPA Dept Ed,Energy, Commerce, HHS, NIH CDC NAID FTC FEC TSA
I propose informing the heads of EVERY government agency their budget for the next 5 years is SELL EVERYTHING an return the proceeds to the treasury. Then give them 90 days to justify any requests for changes.