Penna Dexter

As the president-elect chooses his cabinet we’re reminded of the size and complexity of our federal government. One wonders, can this really be changed?

Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, is one observer who is hopeful. In the December issue of Hillsdale’s publication Imprimis, he writes “our government has swollen beyond recognition.”

The founders enshrined a separation of powers in the Constitution so that each branch could work to keep the others in check. We have come to have, instead, a bloated executive branch filled with cabinet agencies. Dr. Arnn writes: “Since the founding, twelve cabinet offices have been added to the federal establishment.” So, we must ask, how many did we have back then? Four.

It was necessary to have a Secretary of State because we must have relations with other countries and we need someone to handle that.

Since we had and will always have enemies, we needed someone to oversee the defense of the nation. At our founding we had a Secretary of War – now called the Secretary of Defense.

Any government, in order to fund its operations, has to collect taxes and spend money. So we have always needed a Secretary of the Treasury to manage the federal government’s money and budget.

Arguably these three secretaries need departments under them to handle their functions.

The fourth cabinet officer created at our founding was the Attorney General whose job it was to enforce the laws of the federal government. Dr. Arnn says that the Attorney General did not oversee a department. He now leads the Department of Justice.

But do we really need all the departments that have been created since? Larry Arnn points out that the Department of Education was created 1979 under president Jimmy Carter. Hillsdale College, had been doing just fine since its founding in 1944 without a Department of Education. In fact, Dr. Arnn writes, “Education was a thing to behold in the United States long before there was a Department.”

And, he says, “people had homes before we had a Department of Housing and Urban Development; they traveled before we had a Department of Transportation; they traded before we had a Department of Commerce.”

And so on. These cabinet departments and agencies push out rules and regulations to the point that nearly every institution in society is subject to them or worried and watching in order not to inadvertently violate something.

And some of the rules emanating from these departments are expensive, or destructive to freedom, or really over the top. The mandate that schools open girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms to young men who identify as female came from the U.S. Department of Education.

The recent election was partially about this. There was a rallying cry against the governing elite and its control over our lives. Now we hear talk of the elimination of certain departments and restricting the mandates of others. This should be encouraged.