Haven’t gone through the ENTIRE list yet, but I can say with certainty that the Appalachian Regional Commission does not need to be eliminated. Grants from ARC are often the ONLY way many small, impoverished towns can pay to have clean drinking water and fix their sewer systems. The federal gubment (thru EPA) FORCES the State Agencies to impose HUGE fines and often insanely expensive corrective actions on these small communities, and then basically refuses to help provide any funds for them to perform the actions that they have imposed. ARC is one of the few ways many of these communities can get any money to do what’s been required. States often have loan programs, but the requirements are most often DRIVEN by...you guessed it, EPA, and many many can’t quality because of stupid federal bean counters in other departments. The towns answer to the State bean counters who answer to EPA bean counters who answer to IG bean counters who answer to...you get the idea...and halfway up the chain no one’s goals are the same anymore. If there’s a problem, fix it, don’t get rid of it. If your doctor’s answer to a sprained ankle or a bunion was to just automatically amputate your leg rather than deal with the real problem, I’d say your doctor was wrong or had been misled. And don’t just ASSUME they’re going to fix it so that ARC is just not needed anymore by getting rid of all the bean counters and red tape that causes it to be needed. They’d have to get rid of Congress itself for that to happen. Oh, and Beck still sucks.
Then it is time for the people to move and for these towns to collapse and return to nature.
Sorry....But, people do NOT have right to suck up the taxes ( life's work) of others just so they can have the LUXURY of living in their ancestral small town. If my parents dragged their children to new states and my kids have lived ( literally) in the four corners of the nation just to seek work, then the people in these small town can too!
These townsfolk need to find a way to fix it and prove it or MOVE just like other responsible people in this nation.