America has already been a country with a smaller government. It wasnt nearly as effective then as it is now. With more people living in the country now than ever before, the demands have increased over time and it grew out of necessity.
Sure, we could, for example, only have the FAA manage all aviation affairs and have their own investigative branch when there are incidents and accidents, but the NTSB has people capable of that in all transportation incidents in addition to only aviation. So the NTSB is the center of transportation investigation and improvement, and are often first on the scene of major transit incidents. And then theres NHTSA, national highway transportation safety, that enforces regulations and standards that have vastly improved road and vehicle safety over the last several decades.
How would restructuring or removing agencies like those be beneficial to the public’s safety? There’s always room for improvement anywhere, but when we start discussing the permanent removal of manpower (knowledge, creativity, skills, etc) that provides vital services, the question of diminishing standards of safety as an outcome should be considered above all else.
There is no efficiency in a civilization where there is a lack of adequate safety standards, and a lack of governance to create, apply and enforce them.
Every government employee serves a purpose that contributes to what each agency is doing. In my experience working in government (non-federal) for the last 10 years, there has not been a position that was funded to serve no purpose nor contribution. Over time, some of those jobs even were eliminated or repurposed for something else more modern to adjust with the changing times. The process for getting funding for positions in itself requires justifying every single year, so there tends to be cuts and reductions in force already to save on costs of payroll and benefits. Only the jobs that are necessary are approved.
Every part serves a purpose. An agency like Energy, for example, is not only staffing itself with scientists, but there are other parts of that wheel that require more manpower behind the scenes so those scientists can do their jobs. Being behind the scenes doesn’t make these jobs unimportant or unnecessary waste. There are attorneys who act as counsel to the agency, consulting and protecting the agency from violating laws. Those attorneys and scientists have people in charge of maintaining organizational history/records. Those people are supported by system administrators and teams of IT staff that manage the various databases where info is stored, websites, networks, etc. There are teams of investigators and advisors and engineers, and analysts behind them, and information officers and numerous support positions that help them do their jobs. Everyone from the deputies to the custodians are serving a purpose in that agency’s ability to function, and every other agency works similarly, and often understaffed, contrary to the opinion that there are too many government workers.
So it becomes crucial to understand how each agency works and is connected to other agencies, and understand their purpose and the work of their staff, before determining that they are merely performative and a source of welfare to local economies.
I can’t name five federal agencies that are proven to be obsolete, but perhaps a deep audit of 3 million federal employees would be necessary if the goal is to remove what’s considered to be wasteful work. That’s the only way, and a costly one in terms of money, time and man hours, that likely won’t result in the desired outcome of more efficiency at all.
This doesn’t include the 24 million non-federal government employees whose work at the local and state level are parallel to and often depends on federal collaboration and support. Then you have a trickle-down domino effect in play that hurts local and state economies, causing massive and widespread disruptions that there will be less than half of a government available to manage. I don’t see any efficiency in that, but the opposite is more likely to happen instead.