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. . .since they imply that current decision-makers are idiots . .

Not idiots, just bureaucrats.

A retired president of Bell Aerospace (not sure of his name, but he retired in the early 80's so you can look it up) said that he would accept - sight unseen - any contract for 1/4 the price if he could perform without government reporting requirements. In my own company we proposed test programs to the government - on things we wanted to do so the bid wasn't padded - and when they wouldn't approve proceeded to do them on our own money for 1/3 the contract bid price. Norman Augustine of "Augustine's Laws" said something much the same.

Bureaucrats exist for three reasons, in decreasing order of importance. 1) Protect their own positions, which they do by demanding bulletproof CYA data for any decisions they can't avoid. 2) Grow the bureaucracy, because their power comes not from serving the country. It comes from building an empire. 3) (If they must. . . ) Prevent nasty, unscrupulous contractors from 'getting away' with anything.

Nowhere on that list is a requirement to assist industry to deliver high-value, high-efficiency products to the government.

That doesnt' make them stupid. It just makes them bureaucrats. If your family depended on you retaining your position in the bureaucracy, and even growing it in importance (budget/salaries), then you might do the same thing. One must understand 'the enemy' in order to defeat him, and the value system of bureaucrats inherently builds inefficiencies. By now (since the last life-or-death struggle in 1942), the US Government generally and DoD in particular bureaucracies have grown until they are sucking all the life out of the system they are supposed to be serving. (And don't even get me started on NASA!)

. . . it's impossible to say exactly what they need.

Which is why I used only 1 or 2 significant figures, and an approximation signal (~) as well. The federal budget has 12 significant figures, and the DoD budget has 11. It's not required to know 'exactly' what they need in advance to set policy.

Those Federal functions not specified in the Constitution should be first for budget cuts.

On this we agree absolutely. As I said earlier, I wouldn't start with DoD cuts, except in letting the DoD bureaucrats know they won't be allowed to stifle cost-effectiveness by getting rid of some of the non-value-added 'oversight' and the overseers that go with it. On the other hand, the whole budget problem is really about dealing with 'entitlements', and *none* of them are even allowed by the Constitution.

The federal government seized 1/8 of all the compensation my father received throughout his working life for Social Security. At the end of his life, he needed that money to live on. We can't just eliminate those payments without ruining the lives of honest, hard-working men and women who would have been fine without the bureaucracy 30 years ago, but have no alternative now.

Nonetheless, Social Security is not Constitutional. Neither is Medicare, nor Medicaid, nor Food Stamps, nor any of the other "entitlement" programs. We need to move back from that heresy and toward the Constitution.

In the meantime, there are at least 5 cabinet-level departments that could be eliminated immediately or at least demoted to less than cabinet level (Education, Labor, Commerce, Agriculture, HUD) and at least 3 others that could be essentially eliminated with the small value-added part going somewhere else (e.g. the nuclear regulatory part of Dept. of Energy to DoD).

Anyone whe honestly reads the Constitution would reach essentially the same conclusion. Which means I'll add another 'characteristic' to bureaucrats which is not the same as stupid. They are inherently dishonest - as established with great clarity by Friedrich Hayek in "The Road to Serfdom."

Phyler: "Nowhere on that list is a requirement to assist industry to deliver high-value, high-efficiency products to the government."

I think I understand your points here, since they are the same ones I first heard as a boy, some 50 years ago.

And in every election, politicians promise to fight against Pentagon "waste, fraud and abuse", and every new administration then claims to have "saved" taxpayers billions through their new "streamlined" procedures.
Indeed, it sometimes seems that what one administration hails as a great advancement in procedures, the next discards as just so much bureaucratic hummana-hummana.

That's ten new administrations now, and yet as near as I can tell, the problem is today described in exactly the same words as 50 years ago.

And that's why I'm highly dubious of any claims that some knight in shining armor is going to ride into town, to kill off all money-wasting "dragons" and "sacred cows". ;-)
Since, by all accounts, that's never happened before, why should anyone think it might happen now?

Bottom line: National defense, unlike so much else our Federal Government does, is a serious constitutional requirement, and yes, rooting out wasteful spending should be a daily responsibility of every manager at every level.
However, all that said and done, the nation must provide itself whatever defense it truly needs, almost regardless of the cost.

As for all those other Federal programs you mentioned -- Social Security, Medicare, etc. -- they are not constitutional, and should be overhauled both to protect beneficiaries and get that money out of Federal coffers, away from temptations to Congress to spend on other pet projects.

And exactly when will that happen?
Doubtless when those sacred cows come home... ;-)