Daniel Henninger nailed it in his article “Killer Bureaucracies,” which discussed the poor performance of so many federal agencies recently. He called for “scaled-down, distributed public responsibilities” to reduce bureaucratic failure.
To that end, Congress should pursue three reforms:
- Eliminate bureaucracies that we do not need. Departments that mainly pump out subsidies and intrude on properly state, local, and private activities should be terminated, including the Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Energy. Federal organizations that perform useful business functions should be privatized, including USPS, FAA, TSA, Amtrak, TVA, and the Army Corps of Engineers.
- When feasible, scrap department superstructures—such as Homeland Security—because they add complexity and blur responsibility. Homeland agencies, such as the Secret Service and Border Patrol, should stand on their own, have narrowly-defined tasks, and report directly to the president.
- Assign the oversight for each agency to a single House and single Senate committee so that citizens know which politicians are to blame for failures. Homeland Security is currently overseen by more than 90 committees and subcommittees, but that’s absurd because when every politician is responsible, none of them are.
The federal bureaucracy can work better, but only if it is much smaller.
