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I mean, there's several obvious ones that could be considered easy targets: FBI, ATF, ICE, DHS are all ostensibly criminal enforcement and/or counterintelligenc

I mean, there's several obvious ones that could be considered easy targets: FBI, ATF, ICE, DHS are all ostensibly criminal enforcement and/or counterintelligence (even Secret Service under Treasury). In theory, a lot of that could be merged and get rid of cross agency inefficiencies and bureaucracy. FAA, NTSB, NHTSA, OSHA are serve similar functions around safety, but for different things. Why not have one "safety" org? Maybe FDA, USDA belong here, too. Simplify the tax code, or better yet, eliminate the federal income tax and replace it with a consumption tax that would be more fair and less paperwork. IRS could largely go away, too. CIA, NSA, NRO are all intelligence agencies with different mandates. Could probably merge them with more strict Congressional guidelines on budgeting. Part of the problem is there's very much a tribal mindset across most of the TLAs at the federal level, mostly because they're all chasing limited funding. I'm trying to not look at this with a political mindset, but purely a functional mindset. Put like agencies together. We don't need 3 or more agencies doing X for A, B and C, etc. We need one agency doing X for the whole government.

SllX 5y ago
You’re mostly speaking my language, but my primary goal towards axing much of the FedGov would be around reducing the powers of the Presidency (which encompasses all of the Executive bureaucracy), focusing the objectives of the Presidency on fewer but more important domains and reducing the stakes of each election’s outcome. The more you have the FedGov do for you, the more intent you are on seeing that the “right” people win when there are very functions that the FedGov provides domestically that couldn’t be served by State governments that, as a side effect of not having their overlapping tax bases contributing so much towards a large Federal bureaucracy, don’t need to get their money back from Departments that serve as umbrella organizations for redistributing wealth between States. I don’t think there’s much gains to be had by trying to re-architect who does what and what we conceptualize them as as just moving offices under an appropriate enough Secretary and shutting down the superfluous ones. DHS is one I’ll give up as one I had in mind for shutting down, but most of the Offices and Agencies that make up DHS had prior homes until they were shuffled into the newly created DHS. We still need immigration and border control functions, we probably still need some form of airport security (which doesn’t have to be TSA). We still need the Coast Guard, but we don’t need DHS specifically with one more secretary with associated undersecretaries in the stew vying for funds straight from the Congressional teat. EDIT: Just as additional context, each US Department generally has several separate administrative function offices dedicated to providing that specific Department with resources, budgeting offices are pretty common, and handle the budgeting for all agencies under that Department. Axing an entire US Department is a quick and dirty way to reduce some of that overhead. The remaining Departments will increase the headcount of their own administrative offices to compensate any agencies they take in, but given that the big win here is massive reduction of the US Government’s headcount, that is a tradeoff I’m willing to make.

SllX 5y ago

You’re mostly speaking my language, but my primary goal towards axing much of the FedGov would be around reducing the powers of the Presidency (which encompasses all of the Executive bureaucracy), focusing the objectives of the Presidency on fewer but more important domains and reducing the stakes of each election’s outcome. The more you have the FedGov do for you, the more intent you are on seeing that the “right” people win when there are very functions that the FedGov provides domestically that couldn’t be served by State governments that, as a side effect of not having their overlapping tax bases contributing so much towards a large Federal bureaucracy, don’t need to get their money back from Departments that serve as umbrella organizations for redistributing wealth between States. I don’t think there’s much gains to be had by trying to re-architect who does what and what we conceptualize them as as just moving offices under an appropriate enough Secretary and shutting down the superfluous ones. DHS is one I’ll give up as one I had in mind for shutting down, but most of the Offices and Agencies that make up DHS had prior homes until they were shuffled into the newly created DHS. We still need immigration and border control functions, we probably still need some form of airport security (which doesn’t have to be TSA). We still need the Coast Guard, but we don’t need DHS specifically with one more secretary with associated undersecretaries in the stew vying for funds straight from the Congressional teat. EDIT: Just as additional context, each US Department generally has several separate administrative function offices dedicated to providing that specific Department with resources, budgeting offices are pretty common, and handle the budgeting for all agencies under that Department. Axing an entire US Department is a quick and dirty way to reduce some of that overhead. The remaining Departments will increase the headcount of their own administrative offices to compensate any agencies they take in, but given that the big win here is massive reduction of the US Government’s headcount, that is a tradeoff I’m willing to make.