Kevin Drum points it out, referring to the commerce department:
The Commerce Department, for example, includes the Census Bureau. Can’t get rid of that. BEA produces some pretty useful statistics. NOAA does good work on that whole hurricane prediction thing. NIST is handy to have around so we know what time it is and how long an inch is supposed to be. Patents and trademarks really need to be kept going. And someone has to negotiate trade agreements.
Anyway, it turns out Obama wants to keep all that stuff and just put it into a new agency with a different name, which means that even his optimistic estimate is that deep-sixing Commerce would only save $3 billion per year. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not exactly earth-shaking stuff. Williamson might want the ax to swing a little harder, but I’m not sure how much harder it can really swing.
In any case, this is a good example of the problem with people —usually people running for president —using the elimination of cabinet departments as conservative applause lines. It sounds good, but it’s like taking potshots at the visible parts of icebergs. What you really want to do is look below the waterline and ask which agencies all those presidential wannabes are planning to get rid of.
It’s an excellent point. People may get fired up when politicians tell them they want to eliminate the whatever department, but in reality the whatever department does a lot of stuff and some of it is useful, and so we need details of what, exactly, is going away. The whole thing, or just most of it? And that’s all fine if those details are provided. But as it turns out, politicians running for things don’t like to provide us with details (if they did, we might realize how bad their ideas are!) For example, Mitt Romney yesterday told us he would replace Obamas immigration EO with… something! No word yet (or probably ever) on what that something would be.
If you really want to axe a department, the whole thing in its entirety, that’s fine. But you have to say that, so we know what exactly you propose.
520 Chestnut 
Exactly, voters should respond to details. Stating general goals are fine, but at some point politicians needs to actually publically spell out their plans, not pass off their general goals to some committee and then criticize them when they don’t develop the “perfect plan”. Politicians get way too far on their intentions and goals. We need to hold more people accountable and not accept blame shifting when something doesn’t work out right or materialize.
Also, I don’t like the popular notion that if we remove a cabinet department then all of the things that department does will simply not be done any more. Hurricane prediction, for instance, I’m sure would be profitable and undertaken by some company somewhere. And NIST. Maybe if it went away we’d be more likely to adopt SI units 🙂
I agree the private sector will pick up some of the slack but this won’t always work out so well. Take FRED or NASS data for example. The government collects this data and does a fantastic job organizing it and making it freely available to anyone that wants it, and that turns out to be really useful to both the public and private sectors. The private sector may move in and collect and organize this data, but they would have to charge people for access to it. I think having that data be free is a very good thing, for a number of reasons, and I’d be sad to see it go.
Certainly. I am not one of those people who thinks that the government is incapable of doing a very good job. I would prefer, however, whenever possible, that government agencies convert to a user fee model of funding, rather than fighting for budgets. Data collecting could certainly fit into that model. One benefit could be that an agency would set it’s own prices and be in charge of its own budget, rather than have Congress play political football with it. Another benefit (although in some cases, a negative) is that the costs of the service are not imposed on non-users (at least directly). So, like advertising revenue, people find the amount of money in play less objectionable.
Now, this proposal certainly smells a lot like a communist government setting up a business. How could anybody else fairly compete? But, I would argue, a business couldn’t presently compete, so this would be at least an improvement.
Also, private operation or user-fee models don’t preclude the possibility of “free” services. Take email, brodcast television, radio, and many blogs 🙂 for example.
In fact, now that I think about it, Googe’s StreetView service is a wonderful example of a project involving a huge amount of data that is helpful to people and provided at no charge. If the U.S. government had been collected this data and providing it to the public for free, I’m sure there would be plenty of people claiming that such a service could not be provided by the private sector, because there doesn’t appear to be any money in it, and it is a lot of work driving all over the country and taking pictures with expensive cameras.
I’ve harked on the folly of closing government departments and how, while it sounds popular, the private sector doesn’t perform a myriad of tasks simply because there is no money to be made, or the task costs more than profits can be raked.
The biggest issues are who assumes the responsibilities of those defunct departments, and who wants to be responsible for tanking the economy?
Naturally, no politician or analyst can answer these questions to any satisfaction.