Federal Bureaucracies & Bureaucrats: The Enemies Within

This could be a great beginning but we truly need to jettison a lot more of our socialist bureaus, departments, agencies, laws and regulations which have been exactly what all this ‘big government in control’ has been striving toward. The federal government was never intended to be in charge and certainly not a creator, fixer, charity house and surely not a referee picking winners and losers in the business community. It was established with enumerated powers, period.

Rich Loudenback

Gem State Patriot News

Eliminating Federal Agencies Needs Being Done

However, Nobody Wants Their Ox Gored

Today the United States is 17^th in the World Economic Freedom Index.

Economic Freedom defined: The freedom to prosper within a country without intervention from a government or economic authority. Individuals are free to secure and protect his/her human resources, labor and private property. Economic freedom is common in capitalist economies and must incorporate other civil liberties to be deemed as truly free. – The Business Dictionary.com

In a 2015 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, one senator noted that “The Federal Register indicates there are over 430 departments, agencies, and sub-agencies in the federal government.”

Obama’s presidency produced 81,640 total pages of regulations and rules for 2016 alone, a record. To put into perspective what type of effect the regulatory state has on the American economy, a 2014 report by the National Association of Manufacturers found that regulatory costs on all firms exceed $2 trillion annually and disproportionally affect small businesses.

The English writer G.K. Chesterton stated, “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” 99% of these mistakes all have to do with their transgressions in violation of our blessed Constitution.

“The Tenth Amendment emphasizes the belief that the federal government holds only those powers and responsibilities specifically discussed in the Constitution, and that all others are reserved to the individual states, and to the people. This amendment does not give new powers to the states, but specifically safeguards their authority over all matters that are not specifically granted to the federal government.” – The Legal Dictionary.net

WHY WE’RE IN THE MESS WE’RE IN

Unconstitutional subsidies, grants, loan guarantees, tax deductions, foreign aid, stimulus plans, regulations and unconstitutional agencies, therefore, shouldn’t exist in the first place. All these actions by our government for citizens, corporations, financial institutions, states, counties, cities and other countries are not what our federal government was set up to do. It has morphed into a giant good will endeavor purporting to enrich and improve life for the benefit of all while in fact, it has been expropriating power to itself, charging it all to taxpayers and businesses while unsettling our true ‘competitive’ business dynamic in what should be a free marketplace. Most of this was created at the direction of the establishment (CFR). Free people prosper. Restrained people… not so much. Nothing spends like someone else’s money, especially when that someone else is utterly inattentive and over trusting. American citizens have been tuned out and too trusting of politicians that are naïve, deluded or eaten up with $PECIAL INTERE$T greed.

And guess what? Not one of these bureaucratic departments or agencies want their ox gored!

WE DON’T HAVE A BUDGET PROBLEM

We have a spending problem! A budget’s total of expenditures is not ‘the problem,‘ it is the itemizations!, or the ‘devil in the details’ that create the total to be balanced. Our list of expenditures is the root problem. Like itemizations such as our government spending more on corporate welfare subsidies than social welfare programs in 2006. And that is particularly outrageous when you consider that billions of those welfare expenditures are illegally being paid to non-qualifying illegal aliens which actually now is the greater of the two expenditures.

In FY 2016 total US government spending on welfare — federal, state, and local — was “guesstimated” to be $1,032 billion (that’s over $1 trillion), including $591 billion for Medicaid, and $467 billion in other welfare. There are 70 Federal Domestic Assistance agencies with 2306 programs listed here.

LET’S TALK JUST SUBSIDIES

Philip Mattera in his report, “Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent” reported that $110 billion was given to 965 big business parents of subsidy recipients. He also stated that the total number of these awards were over 25,000 and all this accounts for a 75 percent portion of the total value of the Subsidy Tracker universe.

He stated, “Berkshire Hathaway, a company with $485 billion in assets and $20 billion in profits, received over $1 billion of that money. Its chair, Warren Buffett, is worth about $58 billion. Buffett, by the way, is still a darling of the left. He has some nerve to call for higher taxes. The billion dollars his companies took would pay for a lot of teachers, healthcare, and other public goods.” (His alternate recipients would also be receiving the money un-constitutionally.)

From Tom Coburn’s Milking Taxpayers at the Economist.com in 2015, “American farm subsidies are egregiously expensive, harvesting $20 billion a year from taxpayers’ pockets. Most of the money goes to big, rich farmers producing staple commodities such as corn and soybeans in states such as Iowa.

“To this day, to be treated as a farmer in America doesn’t necessarily require you to grow any crops. According to the Government Accountability Office, between 2007 and 2011 Uncle Sam paid some $3m in subsidies to 2,300 farms where no crop of any sort was grown. Between 2008 and 2012, $10.6m was paid to farmers who had been dead for over a year.”

These links are sure to further stir your ire: NFL gets billions in subsidies from U.S. taxpayers, 10 Taxpayer Handouts to the Super Rich That Will Make Your Blood Boil, Should Washington End Agriculture Subsidies?, American taxpayers give an $18 billion gift to the post office every year, and Despite $39 billion in Annual Gov’t. Subsidies, Solar Produced 0.5% of Electricity in US. Also for some insight and inspiration see: Downsizing the Federal Government, YOUR GUIDE TO CUTTING FEDERAL SPENDING.

RON PAUL PROPOSED SAVING $1T BY SCRAPPING 5 FED. DEPT’S

Stephanie Condon with CBS News reported in 2011 that Ron Paul during his presidential campaign “unveiled a plan to cut $1 Trillion from the federal budget within one year by cutting a handful of federal departments.

“Paul’s plan would shape the federal government to fit the Texas Republican’s small-government, federalist views, slashing remaining department budgets, immediately ending all war spending, eliminating programs viewed as unnecessary, sending control over programs like Medicaid to the states, scrapping significant regulations and cutting taxes.

“Along with the Departments of Energy and Education, Paul also proposes eliminating the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, and Interior. Paul would also abolish the Transportation Security Administration, leaving security at airports and other transportation systems up to the private sector.”

TRUMP SPENDING CUT IDEAS

Writing for the Cato Institute, Chris Edwards says, “So let me suggest some wasteful spending that the new administration should tackle, and the annual savings from terminating each:

K-12 school subsidies, which generate bureaucracy and stifle innovation ($25 billion).

Farm subsidies, which enrich wealthy landowners and harm the environment ($25 billion).

Rural corporate welfare, which is handed out by the Department of Agriculture ($6 billion).

Energy subsidies, which have been one boondoggle after another ($5 billion).

TSA airport screening, which Trump has said is “a total disaster” ($5 billion).

The war on drugs, which wastes police resources and generates violence ($15 billion).

Excess pay for federal workers, especially gold-plated retirement benefits ($33 billion with a 10 percent cut).

Housing subsidies, which distort markets and damage cities ($37 billion).

Community development aid, which is corporate welfare used for buying votes ($11 billion).

Urban transit and passenger rail funding, which are properly local and private activities ($12 billion).

Obamacare exchange subsidies and Medicaid expansion, which should be repealed along with the overall law ($225 billion a year by 2026).

TOP 10 EXAMPLES OF GOVERNMENT WASTE

Josh Guckert at Libertarian Republic.com cites what he calls his Top 10 Examples of Government Waste, “Government Agencies Are Out of Control. When George Washington became President, his cabinet consisted of only an Attorney General and the Secretaries of State, War and Treasury. Needless to say, in the two centuries since then, government bureaucracy has gotten completely out of control, and it has become nearly impossible to keep track of all of the country’s departments and agencies. While there are entire departments that should also be discarded, here are 10 agencies which we could easily do without. Because there are so many which are ineffective and intrusive, this is certainly not an exhaustive list:

1. National Security Agency
2. Food and Drug Administration
3. Environmental Protection Agency
4. Amtrak
5. Internal Revenue Service
6. Federal Emergency Management Agency
7. Transportation Security Administration
8. Drug Enforcement Administration
9. Federal Communications Commission
10. Federal Reserve

 Also, see the GAO report about how the federal government wasted $45 billion in redundant programs.

It’s interesting that the Government Accountability Office’s 2016 report presents: “ 92 actions that the executive branch or Congress could take to improve efficiency and effectiveness across 37 areas that span a broad range of government missions and functions.

GAO suggests 33 actions to address evidence of fragmentation, overlap, or duplication in 12 new areas across the government missions of defense, economic development, health, homeland security, and information technology.

GAO also presents 59 opportunities for executive branch agencies or Congress to take actions to reduce the cost of government operations or enhance revenue collections for the Treasury across 25 areas of government.”

PRESIDENT TRUMP WANTS TO KILL THESE 17 FEDERAL AGENCIES AND PROGRAMS. HERE’S WHAT THEY ACTUALLY COST

Here’s a list of the various federal agencies reportedly on the chopping block so far with their budgets. See the full report with more details on each as reported in an article by Taylor Tepper with the above title at Time.com/money.

1. Corporation for Public Broadcasting – Budget: $445 million
2. National Endowment for the Arts – Budget: $150 million
3. National Endowment for the Humanities – Budget: $150 million
4. Minority Business Development Agency – Budget: $36 million
5. Economic Development Administration – Budget: $215 million
6. International Trade Administration – Budget: $521 million
7. Manufacturing Extension Partnership – Budget: $142 million
8. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services – Budget: $286 million
9. Office of Violence Against Women – Budget: $480 million
10. Legal Services Corporation – Budget: $503 million
11. Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department – Budget: $156 million
12. Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Justice Department – Budget: $123 million
13. Overseas Private Investment Corporation – Budget: Self-sustaining
14. UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – U.S. Funding: Estimated $10 million
15. Office of Electricity Deliverability and Energy Reliability – Budget: $262 million
16. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy – Budget: $2.9 billion
17. Office of Fossil Energy – Budget: $878 million

This could be a great beginning but we truly need to jettison a lot more of our socialist bureaus, departments, agencies, laws and regulations which have been exactly what all this ‘big government in control’ has been striving toward. The federal government was never intended to be in charge and certainly not a creator, fixer, charity house and surely not a referee picking winners and losers in the business community. It was established with enumerated powers, period.

FINALLY, ELIMINATING THE SOCIALIST AGENCIES PROCESS HAS BEGUN.

1. Bill, H.R. 861, was just introduced by Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to abolish the ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (also known as the EPA),
2. Bill, H.R. 899, to shut down the controversial and unconstitutional U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION was introduced in Congress by Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a leading constitutional conservative.
3. In re-introducing the ATF Elimination Act on Thursday, January 12, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R- Wis.) explained one of the primary reasons why: “The ATF is a scandal-ridden, largely duplicative agency that has been branded by failure and lacks a clear mission. It is plagued by backlogs, funding gaps, hiring challenges, and a lack of leadership.” – Unquote The New American .com’s Bob Adelmann

That’s a beginning. Then we need keep going and gore the oxen of the BLM, USFS, Fish and Wildlife, US Parks Dept., etc. while at the same time getting our western states’ land back. The Fed’s shouldn’t control any of our states’ lands.

The Federal Government should be about nothing except its enumerated powers!!! IT’S A STATES’ RIGHTS THING. States should control land, water, air and parks. Check the Constitution and awaken and threaten your legislators with retirement should they not start the hard job of reclaiming our Republic as it should be. This can and needs being done.

It should be pointed out that former government employees would evolve into vibrant jobs in the expanding commerce of the healthier private sector and be just fine. As Americans, the good ones will appreciate their new freedoms and the whiners will have to attend to some growing up. America isn’t about guarantees. It is about the freedom to grow and succeed and learning valuable lessons that can be built upon when attaining less.

States Bob Adelmann of the New American .com, “The one thing that would work best at reducing government: following the limitations placed on the federal government by the Constitution. Under Article 8, the duties have been enumerated, limited, and then guaranteed under the 10th Amendment: ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’ Just following the Constitution would, it has been estimated, cut the government by at least 80 percent.” Think of the good that money could do working in the private sector.

America isn’t about government freebies, it’s about freedom, personal responsibility, morality and limited government.

Ox goring season is open year round. There are so many oxen to gore, whose protection will be vehemently fought for by LOBBYI$T$, their ‘client’ corporations, supported legislators, Presidents and judges. Patriot Up!

Free Range Report