This is the case for many of the "Department of" organization the United States has; it probably applies just as well to other countries similar organizations.
The issue with removing the DHS is, most people see it only as Airport security and they WANT THAT GONE. How do you deal with the tens of thousands of unionized government workers who do that job? Do we just hide them elsewhere?
I doubt it will ever be gone, even the Department of Education; only active since 1980; has produced no credible results and yet eats 69 billion a year. Many of the services people attribute to it are actually handled by other Departments. For the most part it just doles out grants - why can't that be elsewhere?
We need to broaden our approach to reducing government agencies. First item on the agenda is consolidating or eliminating similar programs. Then from that eliminating programs that are obsolete or no longer needed. The list goes on and on. So just picking one isn't enough, its government that needs a rethink.
> has produced no credible results and yet eats 69 billion a year. Many of the services people attribute to it are actually handled by other Departments. For the most part it just doles out grants - why can't that be elsewhere?
The purpose of the Department of Education isn't to "produce credible results." It's a welfare program for minorities, the poor, and the disabled (I don't meant that pejoratively). ~72% of that $65 billion goes to just three things: Pell Grants, Title I grants (direct aid to municipalities for the disadvantaged), and IDEA grants (direct aid to municipalities for the disabled). Sure, you're funneling money to the people statistically least likely to benefit from it, but that's not the point. The point is that everyone can get at least a minimum level of education, even if they are poor or have a learning disability. It's the minimum basic guarantee we give to people in a society where we pretend to be a meritocracy but tolerate dramatically unequal starting positions for different people.
Municipalities could not provide this guarantee on their own. White flight in the 1960's and 1970's left inner city school districts decimated. E.g. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is 86% black or hispanic and 87% low-income. 24% of the system's budget comes from federal sources (about $1.65 billion). 31% comes from the state, and 36% from local property taxes.
Inner city schools in the U.S. are mostly similar in terms of demographics, and the result of a fragile political compromise. Middle class people fund the systems, but don't want to send their kids to schools that are 85-90% low-income minorities. As a result, you can tax them only so much before they just move out to the suburbs. State and federal funding keeps these school districts in existence, and with state budgets strapped as they are, the DoE is the lynchpin that keeps the whole thing from collapsing.
Pell Grants were $22.8 billion, Title I Grants to Local Education Agencies (called College and Career-Ready Students now), was $14.5 billion. Special education grants to states was $11.6 billion (IDEA is state level, not municipal level, my mistake). $48.9 / $68 = 72%.
There are some more in there too ($0.1 billion in grants for Indian education, etc), but those three are the budget drivers.
I think his point was that if the goal is to funnel money by writing checks, it could be achieved by an entity smaller in size than 5,000 employees. If there're no measurable results, even better.
What makes you think that it could be achieved by a smaller entity? The grants go to thousands of municipalities all over the country and 10 million Pell Grant recipients. Also, the department oversees $150 billion in annual direct student loans to 13 million students every year. Figuring out who is eligible for grants, how much different programs should get, etc, is not a trivial task. Also, the Dept. of Ed.'s mandate is complicated by Title I and IDEA. The purpose of Title I is to combat racial discrimination in education among historically disadvantaged minorities, and the purpose of IDEA is to combat educational discrimination among the disabled. These are hairy and complicated problems to deal with (e.g. the Department is charged with dealing with the states, who look for every way possible to avoid providing services to minorities and the disabled).
The program management overhead of the Dept. of Ed. is about $1.8 billion: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget12/summary/ed.... Out of that $1.8 billion, $1 billion goes to administering student loans and Pell Grants. Assuming that it costs about the same to administer a student loan versus a Pell Grant, we can estimate that maybe $450 million is spent administering Pell Grants. That reduces the overhead, excluding student loans (which aren't included in the $65 billion discretionary budget) to $1.25 billion, or 1.9%.
People don't want to be perv-scanned, and they don't want to have to take their shoes off. I don't think they object to a 20th-Century level of inspection.
The issue with removing the DHS is, most people see it only as Airport security and they WANT THAT GONE. How do you deal with the tens of thousands of unionized government workers who do that job? Do we just hide them elsewhere?
I doubt it will ever be gone, even the Department of Education; only active since 1980; has produced no credible results and yet eats 69 billion a year. Many of the services people attribute to it are actually handled by other Departments. For the most part it just doles out grants - why can't that be elsewhere?
We need to broaden our approach to reducing government agencies. First item on the agenda is consolidating or eliminating similar programs. Then from that eliminating programs that are obsolete or no longer needed. The list goes on and on. So just picking one isn't enough, its government that needs a rethink.