Useless Cabinet Departments

     Presidential Cabinet-level Departments have grown in both number and size over the last 150 years, while they have generally become more and more useless even as they grow more burdensome.

     Beginning in the mid-Nineteenth Century, more and more departments have been created by the federal government and the secretaries who head them made part of the Cabinet. Few of these beyond the original five created by President George Washington, the Departments of State, War (now Defense), Treasury, Justice, Post Office (now an independent agency), are tasked with constitutional federal functions and even of those few that are, none of them ought to rise to the level of the Cabinet. 

     In fact, much of the work of these Cabinet Departments is not even appropriate for government, let alone the federal government. There is nothing federal about housing or agriculture, for example. 

     These Cabinet Departments were often created as boondoggles for patronage jobs for political parties. They were created as such or later elevated to cabinet status in order to please some political constituency.

     The Cabinet is supposed to advise the President on matters of state. But, does it matter what the Secretary of Education thinks of the latest international crisis? Furthermore, each Cabinet Secretary, no matter how insignificant, inexperienced or unknown to the public is in line to the presidency, according to the Presidential Succession Act.

     Cabinet Departments are headquartered in Washington, D.C. in massive buildings full of bureaucrats. It is striking how wasteful they are, considering they serve no valid purpose:

     No commerce takes place at the Department of Commerce, except maybe if office vending machines are counted. 

     No agriculture takes place at the Department of Agriculture.

     No one is educated at the Department of Education.

     No healthcare is administered regularly at the Department of Health and Human Services.

     No housing is provided at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

     No energy is produced at the Department of Energy. In fact, it uses energy. 

     I propose the downgrading to the level of agencies the few Cabinet Departments that manage appropriate federal functions and the elimination of most of the rest of them that have been created since George Washington.