Here is $1.12 Billion that we can save immediately – eliminate the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fire Arms (BATF). The buffoonery of this particular arm of the government is legendary. Heard of Ruby Ridge? Waco
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms are all legal. So why exactly do we require more then 5,000 Federal bureaucrats to mismanage booze, cigarettes, and guns? Well – we don’t. Essentially the BATF was a mistake that has been perpetuated. However the Federal government rarely if ever acknowledges mistakes. In the case of the BATF the agency has been passed back and forth between various bigger agencies. As the government taxed or tried to reduce our freedoms, they added responsibilities to the Revenue Laboratory (1886) within the Treasury Department.
I think that it is time to put a bullet in this agency. Just doing away with it would save $1 billion a year AND reduce the flow of American guns to Mexican drug lords. Further, given their track record some bureaucrat will add something like chocolate or french fries to their duties to tax and control if we don’t put a stop it. Get rid of them now.
I never considered getting rid of the BATF. Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm sure we can find quite a few more government agencies to get rid of.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. You can add the Environmental Protection Agency whose mandate has been exceeded a thousand fold, the Department of Education (that has never educated a child), the Department of Agriculture which is an impediment to the very thing that they are supposed to champion, and the Department of Energy which was started to prevent us from being dependant of foreign oil.
ReplyDeleteAll told we have a few hundred billion here. I'd say it would be a good start.
How about the IRS? And, since they aren't doing their job, INS and ICE.
ReplyDeleteATF ------------------------------$1.12 Billion
ReplyDeleteEPA------------------------------$10.486 Billion
Dept of ED------------------------$71 Billion
Dept of Energy--------------------$24.1 Billion
Dept of Agriculture--------------$132.3 Billion
IRS------------------------------$12.633 Billion
ICE-------------------------------$5.82 Billion
You guys have wracked up a total savings of:
$257,459,000,000 - or just over a quarter of a trillion dollars - Well Done. All that without harming the essential or Constitutional functions of the United States government.
Of course I must point out that Barack Obama spends six times that much over and above what the Federal government brings in every year since he took office.