DHS Shut Down Averted

[bedstuy]

I'm personally very upset that a better funding bill wasn't passed, and my dislike for fringe House Republicans grows stronger with each day.  However, I must question how much of this criticism is partisan or legitimate, as I seem to remember quite a few Dems hooting and hollering about the DHS being unnecessary when President Bush was around.

Because it is. It is a hallow department that is massively inefficient with tax dollars according to the Office of Government Accountability, and was basically a "we're doing something about 9/11" gesture. We should roll anything that the department does that is necessary into the Defense Department and the rest are completely eliminated.  Dems were accurate during that time but since the party is a a shallow opportunist party, changed their tune when the departments shut down potentially benefits them.

And of course the Republicans are never going to follow through on this shut down, which is an utter shame.

What?  You want the DHS to shutdown to shut down for some arbitrary length of time?  Why?

And, let's get the history right.  At first, the Bush administration was against the DHS concept.  And, then they were for it and accused any of the opponents of hatred of America, including people who had lost their limbs fighting for this country. 

But, let's get real:  There are two different problems. 

1.  The DHS should never have been created because it was just reshuffling departments for no real reason.

2.  Post-9/11 we have over-invested in border security and homeland security measures that amount to pork barrel spending.

Does shutting down the department help either at all?  No.  We still need the functions of DHS to work, like the Coast Guard, Customs, INS, FEMA, etc.  Changing around those functions from one department to another was the useless part of the bill, it's not the we don't need a Coast Guard or FEMA.

However, getting rid of DHS wouldn't help.  It would just be more wasted money on reshuffling departments and bureaucratic turf, with no real change ultimately.  The real issue should be getting the departments within DHS to work efficiently and smartly on their various missions. 

[bedstuy]

I'm personally very upset that a better funding bill wasn't passed, and my dislike for fringe House Republicans grows stronger with each day.  However, I must question how much of this criticism is partisan or legitimate, as I seem to remember quite a few Dems hooting and hollering about the DHS being unnecessary when President Bush was around.

Because it is. It is a hallow department that is massively inefficient with tax dollars according to the Office of Government Accountability, and was basically a "we're doing something about 9/11" gesture. We should roll anything that the department does that is necessary into the Defense Department and the rest are completely eliminated.  Dems were accurate during that time but since the party is a a shallow opportunist party, changed their tune when the departments shut down potentially benefits them.

And of course the Republicans are never going to follow through on this shut down, which is an utter shame.

What?  You want the DHS to shutdown to shut down for some arbitrary length of time?  Why?

And, let's get the history right.  At first, the Bush administration was against the DHS concept.  And, then they were for it and accused any of the opponents of hatred of America, including people who had lost their limbs fighting for this country. 

But, let's get real:  There are two different problems. 

1.  The DHS should never have been created because it was just reshuffling departments for no real reason.

2.  Post-9/11 we have over-invested in border security and homeland security measures that amount to pork barrel spending.

Does shutting down the department help either at all?  No.  We still need the functions of DHS to work, like the Coast Guard, Customs, INS, FEMA, etc.  Changing around those functions from one department to another was the useless part of the bill, it's not the we don't need a Coast Guard or FEMA.

However, getting rid of DHS wouldn't help.  It would just be more wasted money on reshuffling departments and bureaucratic turf, with no real change ultimately.  The real issue should be getting the departments within DHS to work efficiently and smartly on their various missions. 

Wouldn't the necessary functions of DHS be better run if they were under a different Department and had to report to those people? And look, I know shutting it down is kind of just inefficient and wasteful, but it does open up to conversation at least to more productive ones like this - do we really need a DHS at all?

Think of DHS like a tree diagram like this:



You could put those boxes at the bottom of the chart in a number of different places.  You could make them independent agencies which report to the President.  You could make sub agencies, like DHS could be split into, Immigration, Customs, and Border Security and a catch all department for the rest.  You could come up with a lot of different types of management diagrams.  Ultimately, most of the meat here is within those sub-agencies at the bottom.  Within the Coast Guard, there's another tree diagram.



Would it really matter that much if the Commandant of the Coast Guard reported to the Defense Secretary or the DHS Secretary?  I don't think so.  Obviously, you don't want the Secretary of Agriculture to oversee the Nuclear Regulatory commission.  But, this is all close enough if you ask me.