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YES, THE GOVERNMENT IS TOO BIG AND CONSTANTLY WASTES HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF TAXPAYER MONEY.
A mammoth, sprawling, uncontrollable federal government was never the vision or intent of the founding fathers. Organizations have a propensity to grow to a point of diminishing returns; it ceases to be efficient, effective and/or no longer performs the functions for which it was created. At that point a large organization will tend to look inward and become self-perpetuating rather than value added.
Some or all of that applies today to the Departments in the Executive Branch of the federal government; too big, too ineffective. And more importantly, the annual President’s Budget boils up out of this massive organization. Every government-funded program is maintained and sustained inside these bureaucracies.
TWO WAYS TO FIX THIS PROBLEM, TOP-DOWN OR BOTTOM-UP
Since the government shutdown, President Trump has said he will work with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russel Vought, to cut the size of government and spending.
OMB’s mission is to, “prepare the President’s federal budget and assist in managing the performance of federal agencies.” If the OMB attempts to take on the President’s government-shut-down downsizing, it will necessarily be a top-down operation; one that has been used for decades, has been and will continue to be a failed concept of operations.
Elon Musk’s DOGE was effective at identifying and tracking huge government/Congressional spending but their general Executive Branch downsizing plan was a complete bust; top-down. Their concept of operations was to have government employees, “explain in writing what you accomplished last week.” From that, somehow draw conclusions leading to decisions as to their viability. Ill-conceived and completely ineffective. OMB will not be any more effective than DOGE was.
BOTTOM-UP EXECUTIVE BRANCH CONCEPT IS A PERFECT FIT
President Trump can cause this to be completed in the next 2-3 months. Put Vice President Vance in charge.
Vance will direct every Department and Agency to have their Deputy Secretary/Director set up an internal small Government Reduction Task Force.
Each task force will draw a detailed organization diagram with “boxes” down to the lowest level. They will direct the leader of every “box” in the org diagram to immediately submit a ONE-PAGE answer to three questions.
One: What is you mission? When formed 25 years ago it may have been important but absolutely worthless today.
Two: What is the originating document; a law, a regulation, Executive Order, internal senior leader directive, etc.? If the mission is no longer essential, the originating document can also be eliminated; deregulation.
Three: What is your day-to-day value added to the Department/Agency.
The task force will immediately evaluate every input and come to a conclusion; it needs to be completely eliminated immediately. Or they may see some value in the mission but it can be incorporated into the mission of another “box”, etc.
The Vice President will visit frequently for an in-progress review to insure they are serious about downsizing.
This can all take place in a few weeks and there will be three important accomplishments:
One: Entire subordinate organizations inside the Department/Agency will be deleted. Eliminate dead-wood.
Two: Deleting the element deletes the originating document; deregulating is one of President Trump’s priorities.
Three: The overall President’s Budget is the sum of the thousands of sub-elements throughout the Executive Branch. The budget for these thousands of deleted sub-elements and the tens of thousands of employees inside them will no longer exist in he budget.
CONCLUSIONS
Bottom-up downsizing makes sense. Accomplishes downsizing in a viable, understandable operation, eliminates the correct employees and automatically reduces the size of the President’s Budget. OMB cannot do this in a few days while the government is shutdown.
There is also a states’-rights issues in all of this. As the federal government grows a natural outcome is that they over-reach into areas that are better and more effectively handled at the local and/or state level. Federal over-reach tends to result in a one-size-fits-all approach to problem solving and it is usually ineffective and inefficient.
BOTTOM LINE
Downsizing is very important but adding it in to the government shut-down issue will not get us where we want to be, need to be.