Slash The Fat: 16 Agencies To Terminate
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
Never has a more unnecessary and utterly wasteful agency been created in Washington than the CFPB, which was a conscience-relieving sop to Congressional liberals and other Beltway politicians concocted by Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank to atone for Congress’ egregious $700 billion TARP bailout of Wall Street. Yet the so-called Great Financial Crisis had been caused by reckless mortgage and housing market speculation enabled by the Fed’s hideously low interest rates, not sharp practices at retail banking windows.
Even the abuses of so-called liars’ loans and other scams in the home mortgage market were a function of easy money and lax oversight by bank supervisory agencies, not because mortgage borrowers got tricked into lying about their income or assets!
So there was exactly zero reason to stand up a new $650 million per year regulatory agency sporting 1,500 more bureaucrats to protect financial services consumers. Well, except to humor Congressional grandees like Dodd and Frank and their GOP co-conspirators on the other side of the aisle.
Indeed, the CFPB’s stated mission “to protect consumers in the financial marketplace by ensuring transparency, fairness, and accountability” is outright nonsensical. The fact is, due to regulatory protections and generous government subsidies like FDIC insurance the US economy is vastly overbanked.
There are now roughly 5,400 banks and thrifts holding $24 trillion of assets–along with 4,600 credit unions, 240 money market funds, and a proliferating array of online nonbank alternatives that expand by the day. And all of these institutions are hungry for business and aggressively compete for customers. One bank’s sharp practices, therefore, is the next bank’s sales pitch as to why it is more trustworthy and reliable.
So it’s time Washington finally recognizes that the consumer’s best and ultimate protection is the competitive free market and that today’s financial system is prodigiously endowed with exactly that. Consumers plainly do not need a Financial Nanny on the banks of the Potomac minding the business of their business.
Yet here is what we have today: $640 million worth of bureaucratic busywork and meddling going down the drain for no good reason whatsoever. For crying out loud, the central government should not be funding the $100 million shown below for “consumer education, engagement, and response,” whatever that is.
Moreover, banks and financial institutions, which were already the most regulated and supervised businesses in America back in 2010, didn’t need another $300 million layer of Washington busybodies and regulatory gumshoes overlooking their activities, as also shown below. They already had the Federal Reserve, Office of the Controller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the SEC, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and at least 50 state banking supervisors and regulatory agencies.
In short, termination of the current 1,500 employees of the CFPB and their $240 million annual expense is a no-brainer. So is saving the $400 million balance of the CFPB’s budget, which is currently wasted on contractors, grants, advertising, and other superfluous overhead.
And, no, the fact that these expenses are charged to the Federal Reserve’s budget is no excuse. Under the law, the Fed remits all system profits to the US Treasury, which profits are now being unnecessarily reduced by the $640 million annual waste of the CFPB.
Agency For International Development (AID)
Foreign aid has always been a waste and failure, even in the context of an Empire First foreign policy and quasi-balanced fiscal environment. But under an America First regime and in fiscal conditions literally hemorrhaging red ink, foreign aid amounts to a Sacred Cow that needs to be slaughtered forthwith.
In Chapter 7 we will amplify on how a true America First national security policy would focus almost exclusively on maintaining an invincible strategic nuclear deterrent and a powerful conventional defense of the coastlines and airspace of North America. But suffice it here to note that wasting money Washington doesn’t have on development projects, so-called humanitarian relief, and walking around money for corrupt foreign governments does absolutely nothing for homeland security properly defined.
For want of doubt, here are the 10 largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid (excluding weapons financing) for 2024. Self-evidently, the disastrous proxy war against Russia is enabling Ukraine to absorb the lion’s share of the grift. Yet the result of keeping the Ukrainian government on Washington-infused life support is ultimately a threat, not a boost, to homeland security if it leads to nuclear confrontation with Russia.
Likewise, Ethiopia, Jordan, Somalia, Nigeria, and the now ascendant jihadist opposition forces which overthrew Assad in Syria (who actually get the money) have absolutely nothing to do with safeguarding the liberty of Americans from Maine to Hawaii. And most especially the multi-billion slice of the AID budget which goes to “implementation of the National Strategy for Gender Equity and Equality…(and) to uplift the role of women and girls in all their diversity, including as part of marginalized populations” is purely wokish nonsense utterly irrelevant to national security.
Top Recipients of Non-Military Foreign Aid
- Ukraine: $16.5 billion
- Ethiopia: $2.2 billion
- Jordan: $1.2 billion
- Democratic Republic of Congo: $1 billion
- Somalia: $1 billion
- Yemen: $933.9 million
- Nigeria: $904.4 million
- Afghanistan: $815.1 million
- South Sudan: $794.2 million
- Syria: $748.2 million
Thus, simply closing the Agency for International Development would rid the Swamp of 10,000 bureaucrats at an annual direct compensation cost of $1.6 billion. But that would be just the tip of the iceberg. AID has offices and operations in more than 70 countries around the planet. And these offices are loaded with bureaucrats in the service of Empire First, who are equipped with checkbooks from which upwards of $30 billion of grants are funded annually.
Indeed, zeroing out AID in its entirety is a downright mandatory component of any attempt to slash the Federal budget by $2 trillion. When America is careening toward a ruinous $150 trillion public debt by mid-century it borders on criminal negligence for Washington to send $794 million per year to the likes of South Sudan. The latter is a godforsaken hellhole in central Africa with a GDP of barely $5 billion and per capita income of just $400. Yet AID is shoveling in assistance equal to more than 16% of GDP!
Even more ridiculous is the fact that while Washington has been bombing the Houthi-controlled northern areas of Yemen to smithereens at a cost to the US military of $3 billion in the last three years alone, it is also sending foreign aid of $933 million per year to the government in the south of the country, thereby enabling the Sunni south to pursue its decades-old civil war against the Shiite north. Perhaps it might be more rational to stop both streams of funding and allow the Yemenis to pursue their own civil war in peace–or at least without supervision and meddling by folks on the banks of the Potomac.
And, no, protecting the shipping lanes into the Red Sea is not a matter of US national security. The Chinese container ships and Saudi oil tankers heading for Europe through the Bab-El-Man-deb Strait can always reroute around the Cape of Africa at a small premium if they deem the Red Sea route too hazardous. And, self-evidently, Washington has no business subsidizing cheaper ocean freight to Europe for the oil princes and Chicoms.
At the end of the day, the Yemen idiocy on display above is no aberration. It represents the inherent stupidity and waste of an imperial foreign policy that attempts to dominate every obscure corner of the planet for no reason of homeland security whatsoever. Therefore, one of the first initiatives of President Trump’s pivot to America First must be the complete shutdown of the AID.
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is a Washington institution steeped in ignominy and disdain for constitutional liberty and democracy. Its forerunner was created during the horrific Red Scare Raids of Attorney General Mitchell in 1919; it flourished prosecuting the idiotic regime of Prohibition during the 1920s; rose to malefic aspect during the Hoover era of Communist witch-hunting and vicious prosecution of civil rights and peace leaders like Martin Luther King Jr; became a fount of false fear-mongering, stings, and entrapment ploys during the War on Terror; and ended up being weaponized by Deep State nomenklatura to destroy the duly elected President of the United States in 2016 and after.
In short, that’s 100 years of assault on the rule of law, not its promotion. That history is reason enough to abolish the FBI completely, thereby shrinking the Federal payroll by more than 37,000, at a savings of $6 billion in direct compensation costs and another $5 billion in overhead and operating expenses.
The fact is, there never was a need for the FBI in the first place–outside of political opportunism and the furtherance of crusades which are not within the proper purview of the Federal government. Again, however, we have 90,000 units of state and local government for a reason: That is, to decentralize the exercise of government power, and enforcement of the criminal laws is precisely one of those functions best kept as far away from the nation’s capital as possible, as the checkered history of the FBI proves in spades.
In any event, as a practical matter crime prosecution and enforcement is already overwhelmingly conducted by state and local police forces and courts. For instance, there are currently about 7.4 million arrests in the US each year, but only about 10,000 of these are executed by the FBI. That’s just 0.14%.
Likewise, there are currently 1,214,000 police and law enforcement personnel on the payrolls of state and local governments in the US. That compares to just 15,000 FBI officers (out of 37,300 staff) involved in domestic criminal law enforcement. This includes all agents and support personnel who work on a wide range of federal crimes such as cybercrime, drug trafficking, violent crime, and white-collar offenses, but, again, it amounts to only 1.2% of the state and local police force level.
At the end of the day, just $2.5 billion of the FBI’s $11.4 billion budget is involved in what it generously classifies as “counter-terrorism.” We’d say cut that figure by 60% and spin these personnel and activities off to a $1 billion per year counter-terrorism unit in the DOJ. Any real threat of terrorism in the US, as opposed to self-serving FBI concocted stings like the alleged plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, can be readily handled on a $1 billion annual budget.
After that, close down everything else to the tune of a 34,000-headcount reduction and direct compensation cost savings of $5.4 billion per year–along with another $5 billion of savings from FBI overhead, contractors, occupancy, travel, and other costs.
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
The War on Drugs was misbegotten from the get-go back when Tricky Dick Nixon launched it in 1970. The only thing it has accomplished is to breed criminals and a brutal underground distribution system funded by the wildly excessive profits owing to the artificial scarcity created by drug law enforcement and interdiction. It has also filled the nation’s jails and prisons, mainly on possession charges, thereby providing a taxpayer-funded program where inmates get a free in-house education on how to conduct real criminal activities after their release.
In short, the War on Drugs is a grotesque violation of Market Economics 101. There is simply no other way to characterize the utter stupidity of fostering criminal cartels to do the work of growing, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, and sales that would otherwise be handled by the far more pacific channels of everyday commerce. Indeed, the harsher and more intensive the enforcement against so-called illegal drugs, the greater the amount of crime and the more extensive and tragic the collateral harm that is created as a secondary consequence.
For instance, the plague of fentanyl deaths is clearly owing to the high price of heroin, meth, and other illegal substances stemming from the War on Drugs, which, in turn, encourages the importation and use of fentanyl. Fentanyl is cheaper to produce, easier to smuggle, and extremely potent, making it a lucrative alternative for traffickers. This economic incentive drives its widespread distribution and use, despite its high lethality.
In any event, the surest way to reduce crime at both the borders and in the cities and hinterlands of America alike would be to shut down the DEA cold turkey, releasing 9,300 Federal bureaucrats for more productive work elsewhere. Needless to say, once these hobnailers are off the street, the price of illegal drugs would fall sharply, along with the profitability and incentives for violence among the criminal cartels which run the drug trade.
In all, terminating the DEA would cut its direct compensation cost by $1.5 billion per year, as well as save another $1.6 billion for operations, contractors, and overhead functions. There is hardly any other agency termination candidate where the case is so overwhelming.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)
Ronald Reagan famously said that a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life, and surely the ATF is testimony to that aphorism. In 1920 it was born as the Prohibition Bureau, which housed the hated “revenooers.” After the Volstead Act was repealed in 1933 it continued to stumble between the Treasury Department and the Justice Department over the decades, looking for missions to justify continued funding. Even in relative bureaucratic obscurity, it gained notoriety for the armed standoff at Ruby Ridge, the extermination of the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, and the gun “misplacement” scandal of Operation Fast and Furious, among numerous other bureaucratic misfires.
Yet an analysis of what its 5,300 employees and $850 million compensation budget actually accomplish makes clear that the time to terminate the agency arrived long ago. There is absolutely no reason for the Federal government to be in the alcohol, tobacco, and explosives enforcement business at all. Those are inherently functions of state and local government, if they are to be legally regulated and enforced at all.
Likewise, its $500 million budget for “firearms enforcement” is just a polite term for the administration of gun control laws, which self-evidently don’t control much of anything. Thus, the number of deaths–both suicide and homicides–due to guns has more than doubled from 20,336 in 1968 to 47,284 in 2021, which translates to rates of 10.1 per 100,000 population in 1968 and 14.1 per 100,000 in 2021. So much for the ATF’s enforcement prowess.
In any event, whatever these ATF bureaucrats might be doing that is necessary and legitimate should be turned over to regular state and local law enforcement. If any rump agency is needed to enforce largely ineffective federal gun control laws–given that there are upwards of one-half billion guns in circulation in the US–these activities can be seconded to a modest residual bureau in the Justice Department at the approximate size of the Office of Violence Against Women ($500 million).
