ABOLISH BLOATED BUREAUCRACIES

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: 431

• AMTRAK: Why should the federal government run a transportation corporation? Overall one in four AMTRAK trains is delayed, or one in two for routes over 750 miles.
• DEA: When the DEA was established in 1973, our country had three drug-related deaths per 100,000 Americans. But by 2022, that rate had risen tenfold. Similarly, “from 1981 to 2012 . . . the average, inflation-adjusted retail price for a pure gram of heroin fell by 86 percent. During the same period, the average retail price for cocaine and methamphetamines fell by 75 and 72 percent, respectively.” The DEA also has prosecuted medical doctors for “over-prescribing” painkilling drugs, which has both incarcerated numbers of medical doctors who were simply trying to help their patients, and driven many pain patients to illegal drug dealers. Many people rightly feel that we couldn’t have done it worse if we had tried.
• Department of Education: In the first place, there is no Constitutional basis for the federal government to be involved in education whatsoever (or in healthcare either)! Furthermore, people should understand that the DOE was created in the early 1970s by President Carter so that he could fulfill a campaign promise in exchange for the election support of the teachers’ unions. And all of this has not only been an unneeded expense for the taxpayers, it has demonstrably made education much poorer in many areas. Instead, let the parents choose where the government money will be spent for the education of their children, which will create incentives and much more tailored success.
• Department of Transportation: It doesn’t build roads, so what does it do? “First, it provides infrastructure grants to state and local governments. Second, it owns and operates the nation’s outdated traffic control system. Finally, it acts as a safety regulator for the various modes of transportation, from cars to trucks to trains. None of these functions requires the existence of a federal, cabinet-lever department, which serves mostly to increase costs and reduce efficiency.” Furthermore, the money that comes back down from the DOT almost always has strings attached to it, such as “Buy America” and use more union labor and other politically-motivated favored results.
• Food and Drug Administration: “It’s burdensome drug approval process kills millions through drug lag and drug loss.” How so? Because it takes between 10 and 15 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with the FDA’s process to bring a new drug to market. Accordingly, many seriously ill people die while waiting for that approval, even though a similar drug has long since been approved by other countries. So how does this happen? Because politicians do not get credit for a patient who benefits from a new drug, but will incur the voters’ wrath if a patient is harmed by a newly-approved drug. Hence the program we have today. The free market and private insurance companies would do a far more responsible job!
• Federal Student Loans: “The private sector can provide loans and help protect students from low-quality programs.” But with the easy money of the federal programs has come vastly higher prices for education, as well as incentives to create low-value programs. So, once again, the free market and private insurance companies would do a far more responsible job!

So, yes, there are 18 more, but you get the idea. Some suggestions are more radical than others, but the underlying premise is that we should think about all of our federal departments and agencies, including why they were created and if their goals could be better accomplished with different approaches. And, overall, we must always keep in mind that often when anything goes wrong the politically viable “remedy” is to create a government agency to control the area. And, actually, most of the time this is demonstrably the wrong approach. It’s good for politicians, because then they can demonstrate that they are “doing something.” But, realistically, these departments and agencies almost always become expensive and wasteful (and perpetual) bureaucracies. So thank you REASON Magazine for your guidance in showing that it’s time for us all to refocus on the need and even the desirability for their existence.

(One of Steve Greenhut’s favorite maxims: “Whoever sets the agenda wins.”)