How can the U. S. save $2.5 billion a year, reduce the federal workforce by 4,000 hires, and engage in a symbolic act of undoubted patriotism, all at the same time?
Get rid of the Department of Homeland Security.
Matt A. Mayer, a former DHS employee who claims to have “written more on DHS than just about anyone,” writes in Reason that dismantling DHS would increase co-ordination and decrease inefficiencies.
Since DHS was put in place, in 2003, to increase governmental co-ordination in the face of terrorist threats, Mayer’s charge that it serves the opposite cause should … give us pause.
Establishing the DHS didn’t get rid of turf wars. Why would it? It increased the turf rather than merely reroute chains of communication and command. All other agencies still exist. Extra turf exacerbates co-ordination difficulty.
And then there’s what state and local law enforcement faces: “the multi-headed hydra.” The federal operation remains fragmented, which “only ensures that key items will fall through the cracks between these departments, whose personnel spend far too much time fighting each other for primacy than they should. Our enemies couldn’t ask for a more fertile environment within which to attack us.”
I added the italics, for emphasis.
Ever since Jimmy Carter ran for the presidency on consolidating bureaucratic departments in the nation’s capital, but delivered, instead, new departments, the “logic” of adding new bureaucracies onto old has proven to be the “easy answer” for insiders. But a transparent failure, for everyone else.
So, start over. Get rid of the inefficient monster.
And take heart: republics don’t have “homelands”; empires do. Let’s stop playing the wrong game.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
2 replies on “Safety, Savings and Symbolism”
Sometimes you need to trust your feelings. Whenever I hear “Department of Homeland Security” I feel less secure.
Good presentation of reasons to eliminate one agency. Let’s have as our goal to get rid of all of them. NOT ONE is of value,