Sunset Caucus

What a concept! See this announcement from the new permanent sub-section of the Republican Study Committee here. It begins:

"Washington, Jun 17 - Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) issued the following statement heralding the establishment of the RSC Sunset Caucus ... the RSC Sunset Caucus is dedicated to right-sizing government by identifying and eliminating wasteful and duplicative programs that do not serve the best interests of taxpayers. Members of the caucus, a subset of the RSC, will champion the elimination of at least one federal program through legislative action and raising public awareness."

Hopefully this will become a major plank in the Republican Party in the next few election cycles, as I argued here and here.

I would suggest the Sunset Caucus could start with the Department of Energy. Does anybody remember when this bloated behemoth was created as a Cabinet level department? We were in the midst of an energy crisis brought on by an oil embargo imposed by middle eastern countries. The Department of Energy was to coordinate a national strategy to decrease America's reliance on foreign oil, and increase our long term energy supplies at home. This bureaucracy began its important work in 1977. It's progress thus far:

Grade after 10 years: F+. Grade after 20 years: F. Grade after 30 years: F-.

In sum, over 30 years, our reliance on foreign imports has grown, construction of nuclear power plants and oil refineries have shrunk to zero, and development of new oil assets in the continental United States has been all but prohibited. And a list of the more recent Press Releases indicates this multi-billion dollar bureacracy now spends about all of its time on expensive trendy Green initiatives which hold no near term benefits for America whatsoever, and on preaching to American citizens and companies about the need to reduce their carbon footprint, aka learning to live with less in a new era of scarcity and deprivation.

To call this an Energy Department is Orwellian, to say the least. This anti-Energy Department needs to be shut down, its few workable agencies like the Energy Information Administration rolled into other departments, and the Cabinet Secretary told to go find a real job.