All agencies, departments or legislation involving continuing appropriations that are not specifically identified in the Constitution shall be evaluated within ten years of enactment of this legislation and the responsibility for continuation must be passed onto a new Congress.  The Congress shall determine whether the expenditure remains relevant and whether the value gained exceeds the cost to the treasury. 

Affirmative Argument

We must take control of the profligate spending that occurs year after year without regard to who controls the Congress.  This means we must reduce the size of government and never permanently increase its size. 

When we think of the federal government we think of the Congress, the Courts, the White House and the Military.  Extend that view and we automatically think of the Post Office and other very visible federal agencies.  Extend that more and we come to recognize we have agencies that regulate our use of land, water, weather, emergency agencies, education, energy, and the list goes on and on.  The one thing that appears to be true for any federal agency is that once it is created, we have it forever.  Why?

Go to the web site http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/All_Agencies/W.shtml for a complete list of US taxpayer supported agencies.  After doing so consider what these agencies were created to do, whether their mission remains relevant, whether they are successful.  If we were to begin to identify our federal government today beginning with the same blank piece of paper that Alexander Hamilton and George Washington had, would the agency be able to justify its continuation?  Further, can the Congress justify the creation of the agency in accord with the US Constitution? 

Many large departments today are the amalgamation of multiple agencies, some of which remain relevant but some perhaps that could be eliminated in their entirety.  The Department of Energy was created in 1977 during the Carter Administration.  The DOE combined responsibilities that formerly belonged to the Atomic Energy Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission but a primary goal of the DOE was to make our nation independent of foreign sources of energy.  How well have they done?  We import a greater percentage of foreign oil today than we did when the agency was created to solve that problem.  The total 2010 budget request for the DOE was $26.4 Billion.  How much of this budget is spent on nuclear protection and weaponry and how much is spent in administrative work related to programs that have failed to make us energy independent? 

The Department of Education (ED) was created in 1979 by the Carter Administration.  Has education improved since 1979?  Are more students graduating high school?  Are they doing well in college?  How well has federal aid to education worked?  In 1962 we debated whether we should have federal aid to education at all.  It would appear to my eyes that the education system has gotten worse over the last 48 years and a large part of the problem is local school administrators fighting for federal funds rather than working to give their students a quality education.  The ED 2010 budget request was $46.7 billion. 

The Environmental Protection Agency has a 2010 budget request of $7.2 billion.  How many regulations promulgated by this agency are truly necessary?  Would abolition of this agency result in the nullification of environmental laws or would it simply result in a reduction of onerous regulations that created work for the investigators and work for the manufacturer and added no value to either the economy or the environment? 

These are all rhetorical questions that I believe the Congress should seek answers to, line by line as they explore the budgets of every department or agency that was created in the two centuries.  I recognize that this could not be completed in a year or even two years but I see no reason why it could not be concluded within a decade.  I also see no reason why any agency exists whose authorities are outside the boundaries of the Constitution.  As an example, the National Endowment for the Arts has a 2010 budget request of $167.5 million.  This is small when compared to the multi-billion dollar budgets referenced above but it remains the taxpayers’ money and this should not be squandered simply because it is small in comparison to other budget targets.  I would eliminate this organization in its entirety because I do not see any Constitutional authority for our government to spend taxpayer money supporting the arts.