80% of federal workforce still on the job?
Government shutdown? Where? What government shutdown? I keep hearing about this today; people are panicked, hysterical, extremely upset because the “government” has “shutdown.” Have I inadvertently trespassed into some alternate universe? I’m so confused. In my universe, a partial and temporary work stoppage among some employees in only the federal government, doesn’t qualify as an “AHHH THE GOVERNMENT IS SHUTTING DOWN GOD HELP US THIS IS WHAT THE BOOK OF REVELATION FORETOLD” situation. It’s a small, limited decrease in certain bureaucratic functions. That’s it. In the end, over 80 percent of the federal workforce will continue to work. To call this a shutdown is like ordering a Diet Coke with your Big Mac meal and calling it a “starvation diet.”It’s like calling a 600 pound man “anorexic” because he skipped lunch last Tuesday. Get a grip, America. Or at least a dictionary. This ain’t a shutdown — but Lord, if only…
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It’s all funded by the money and property of private citizens; we are the rightful owners. We own the government, not the other way around.
The world has never seen an entity as expensive, inefficient and wasteful as the American government.Never. Today I’ve heard people lament that they are “ashamed” of their country because of the “shutdown.” I think they ought to be more ashamed when the government is fully operational. The federal government is embarrassing on a historic scale. Our Founders fought to escape the crushing tyranny of the British crown. Do you think they envisioned establishing a new government that would soon dwarf, in size and scope, every other government in the history of mankind?
You don’t think the government is too big? Here’s a partial list of federal departments and agencies, courtesy of USA.GOV. This list doesn’t tell anywhere close to the full story. It doesn’t include all of the various redundant divisions, offices, foundations, services and institutes. And it doesn’t include all of the overlapping state and local agencies. But it does include:
[ You'll need to go to the site to see the LONG lists of agencies and offices ... get ready to hold your finger on the page down key. It starts out: ]
AbilityOne Commission
Access Board
Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
Administration for Native Americans
Administration on Aging (AoA)
Administration on Developmental Disabilities
Administrative Conference of the United States
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
African Development Foundation
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
Agency for International Development (USAID)
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Agricultural Marketing Service
Agricultural Research Service
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Women’s Bureau (Labor Department)
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
That’s about 14 pages. It takes 14 pages to even give you a small taste of the enormity of our federal government. It takes about 4 trillion dollars a year to run this whole thing.
Now, some of these, we can all agree, are essential (like the Marines, for instance.) Some of these, most of us would agree, are frivolous and absurd (lookin’ at you, Indian Arts and Crafts Board). But the most wasteful and unconstitutional government functions are taken for granted by even self-proclaimed “conservatives.” Do we need a Department of Energy? What would happen if it ceased to exist? Would darkness take over the land, like in that horrible NBC show?
Department of Education? If there is anything that must be handled locally, it’s education. How many levels of bureaucracy does it take to teach Johnny his ABC’s? Do we NEED the local school, plus the school board, plus the superintendent, plus the state department of education, plus the national department of education, plus all of the officials, politicians, regulators, agents, administrators and overseers that come with them? Do we NEED that? What would happen if the first few outer layers of bureaucracy just suddenly evaporated into thin air (hallelujah, amen)? Would we strip naked and run through the streets screaming? Would we be lost without a clue as to how to pass information onto the younger generations?
Department of Homeland Security? This is a recent invention. Do we need it? NEED? I know there are many good people with families employed by it, but that’s not what I asked. Call me a heartless beast, but it’s entirely irrelevant to the question at hand. We’ve got the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the ATF, the DEA, border patrol, the Marshals, the local police, and the state police; what part of securing the homeland isn’t covered by these agencies? We had them all, and 9-11 still happened. So what did we do in response? Make the existing government branches more efficient and effective? Of course not, we simply dumped another steaming lump of government on top of it all.
The Office of Government Ethics? Well, that’s just a joke, right?
I could go on. But I’d rather you comb through that list, stop at each item, and ask yourself: “Does the Constitution permit this? Do we need this? What would happen if we didn’t have this?” I’ll tell you one thing that will definitely happen if we didn’t have it, whatever it is: some government workers will be out of a job. That is a very unfortunate side effect — truly and sincerely unfortunate — but it doesn’t change anything. The government is broke to the tune of -17 trillion dollars, and some cutbacks need to happen. Easy for me? Actually, no, there’s nothing easy about living in a country driven to the brink of ruination by a greedy, corrupt, incompetent government.
It boggles my mind that we weep over the plight of the bureaucrat who would lose his job if we downsized the government, yet we shed no tears for the millions of private citizens languishing under the crippling weight of this gargantuan governmental monstrosity. What about the money it takes to run the whole thing? The funds don’t just fall out of the sky like manna from heaven. As your mother reminded you time and again, there is no tree from which it all grows. These superfluous, useless, unconstitutional agencies and departments are funded with money TAKEN BY FORCE from American families. Politicians, in the interest of creating a few cushy jobs for their buddies, can fabricate some inanity like the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Interagency Coordinating Committee, and it might seem like harmless fun.
But it isn’t harmless. This lunacy has done great harm — potentially fatal harm — to the American way of life. Even worse, look at what it’s done to the critical thinking skill of the average America. The following is an actual conversation I had with a certain gentleman a few days ago:
Me: “We should abolish the Department of Housing and Urban Development.”
Other guy: “Yeah, sure, I guess people shouldn’t live in houses anymore.”
This was a grown man who possessed, presumably, a full brain. But in his mind, if they call it “Department of XYZ,” you can’t get rid of the department without annihilating the XYZ.So it follows, for instance, that we can’t cut the Department of Agriculture — and it’s 90 billion dollars in annual spending — without obliterating all farms everywhere in the country. Sure, humanity subsisted on agriculture for thousands of years before the Department of Agriculture came around, but now the two are inexorably and irreversibly linked. Hell, why don’t they just establish a Department of Breathing?
Oh, you want to get rid of the Department of Breathing? SO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SUFFOCATE?! MURDERER!
I don’t think I’ve made my point clearly enough. I don’t think I’ve fully illustrated just how utterly deranged it is to complain about a temporary slim-down of government. I don’t know that you quite comprehend just how immense our federal government is. I don’t think anyone can comprehend it.
But we can try. Here is a more complete — but far from exhaustive — list of every federal agency, office, service, institute, department, division and commission (H/T akdart.com). I warn you, this list is over 200 pages long:
[ Here's where the page down key really gets used. ]
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I assume you read through that entire thing, and now it’s tomorrow.
Are you still worried about some of the employees who are employed by some of these agencies not showing up to work for a few days? They say we ought to cut government with a scalpel; I disagree. I say we take a hacksaw to it, but first we use a dart. Print this list out (you might want to buy new printer ink first), hang it on your wall, put a blindfold around your eyes, and throw a dart at it. Chances are, whatever you hit can be abolished.
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