I have been following the government reform plan for some time now and I'm actually impressed with some of the ideas coming from Mick Mulvaney in recent weeks. For those of you that maybe don't know, Mr. Mulvaney was hired by President Trump to be the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB. In that position, he was given the Reagan-esque task of proposing solutions to make the existing federal bureaucracy smaller and more efficient. Which I think are excellent ideas on both fronts.
For over a year, the OMB and Director Mulvaney conducted extensive reviews of all of the disparate federal departments and agencies. Now they are beginning to propose possible solutions to streamline and make government more efficient. If the changes are enacted, it will lead to the betterment of the United States as a whole. So far, I am encouraged.
Currently, the OMB has proposed the merging of the Department of Education and the Department of Labor into a new federal agency called the Department of Education and Workforce. The reasoning behind this proposal was also just a simplistic... both agencies are geared toward getting individuals ready for the workforce. Keeping them separate just creates redundancy and confusion as neither department really knows what the other is doing.
Recently though, Mr. Mulvaney gave an update to the President and his cabinet which was televised on Fox Business. He provided several analogies which shock the system not so much because of their content but rather with their simplicity in explanation.
For example, a salmon swimming in the ocean is handled by the Department of Commerce. Once the salmon enters a fresh water stream to head towards its spawning grounds, it is regulated by the Department of the Interior. If the salmon encounters a ladder used to aid its journey around an obstacle, it falls under the Army Corps of Engineers. That is crazy!
Mr. Mulvaney had other examples of government inefficiencies as well... there's the hotdog, the chicken, egg, or omelet conundrum, and the cheese pizza. He also discussed the movement of certain functions to different agencies for the same simple reason, efficiency.
Here's the video from YouTube: