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What's the last federal bureaucracy that was abolished? This is never gonna happen. The size of government only goes one way.
by newnewnew 13y ago
What's the last federal bureaucracy that was abolished?
This is never gonna happen. The size of government only goes one way.
- rayiner 13y agoThe size of the executive branch, including the postal service, peaked under Bush I: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/09/how_many_federal_workers_are_t.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/09/how_man.... The current number of civilian executive branch employees is somewhere between where it was in 1964 and 1970. Adjusted for population, the executive branch is 40% smaller than it was during its peak under Nixon. Now, the picture gets murkier if you include contractors, but they're not part of the bureaucracy per se and it's not like contractors were doing poorly, employment wise, during the Cold War. Federal discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP is not exactly monotonically increasing: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34424.pdf http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34424.pdf (17). Aside from the recent bailouts and stimulus in response to the recession, it's smaller in percentage terms than it was at the peak of big government in the 1970's. Both defense and non-defense components of discretionary spending are smaller as a percentage of GDP. As a practical matter, agencies don't get abolished. But they do get marginalized. Congress underfunds them relative to their original mandate, which forces them to shrink relative to the rest of the government and the rest of the economy. Is there hope of their doing this with DHS? Possibly. The long-term trend for all defense-related spending is sharply downward.