A Mega BRAC arrangement, with an up-or-down vote. The Congress is a spendthrift which always argues it's only this, or it's too small to matter.

We, or our children, are left with the bill. Given a choice, none who pay taxes would be for most of this spending.

That really depends on what they define as wasteful? I'm guessing that given that he's GOP any program that teaches science based sex ed would likely be "wasteful" because the church dose it better. Smaller government can mean less funding for the arts and education but oodles of money for DEA and Porn police.

The DEA is actually a good case in point. Why does the federal government need three separate law enforcement agencies -- the DEA, the BATF, and the FBI -- with largely overlapping responsibilities? Eliminate the first two and hand their jobs to the FBI. Even given the additional hiring the FBI would need for the additional work, it would probably save billions per year.

It's like you're trying to give cancer a cancer. Won't work.

Dave, there are at least two reasons that you find that kind of situation. One is the value of competition. Agencies compete with each other for "turf", in this case, drug cases. It keeps them on their toes just as in any other market environment. The second also has to do with competitin - agencies are often the best check on the power of other agencies. This really coems into play with intelligence agecies, who are in fact the only effective check on abuses. They collect on each other. And even so this doesn't always work.

With regard to your specific example, the FBI and ATF don't focus on drugs. They do drug cases if it's easy case and an easy stat for them, but they don't concentrate on drug cases. The real competition on drugs is between Homeland Security and DEA.

Better would be: any government program, agency, or whatever must have - at the time it is created - a sunset date. It must be explicitly renewed, and that renewal must follow the same legislative procedures (debate, etc.) as a new authorization.