We have 15 departments with Secretaries. I would merge or return 10 of those and create 1 new one, giving us a total of 6. As follows:
4 created at the start:
Dept. of State
Dept. of the Treasury
Dept. of Defense (previously War & Navy)
Dept. of Justice/Attorney-General
The 5th:
Dept. of Commerce
And the “new” and last one (6th):
Department of Domestic Affairs
The remaining 10 to be folded:
Interior (to Domestic Affairs)
Agriculture (to Commerce)
Labor (to Commerce)
Health and Human Services (to D.A.)
Housing & Urban Development (to Commerce)
Transportation (to Commerce)
Energy (to Commerce)
Education (to D.A.)
Veterans Affairs (to Defense)
Homeland Security (to Defense)
Of course, then Domestic Affairs could be merged into Commerce. So many of the 20th century-onwards departments really ought to figure no higher than being sub-cabinet positions, with most under Commerce. After that, perhaps Commerce itself could be folded into Treasury, and then we’d be back to essentially what the Founding Fathers wanted us to have.
Kucinich wants a Department of Peace.
I would just go all 10th Amendment and delete the unconstitutional Dept of Ed. altogether.
The Department of Energy is the most misunderstood department in the country and the third most incompetent (DHS gets 1st place and Education 2nd place with bonus points for irrelevancy).
What folks don't understand is that 1/3 to 1/2 of Energy is for nuclear weapons [ and the cleanup of the (very real) nuclear mess some overagressive and irresponsible adolescent generals caused in the early years of the cold war.] A lot of folks might argue for turning the nuclear weapons part over to DoD, however, we, as most countries, have always believe that nuclear policy must be in civilian hands separate from the DoD. So that argues for recreating the AEC to deal with those issues.
Another part of Energy that is actually pretty good is the office of science and they fund a lot of good basic science work in chemistry, physics and material science and operate a lot of our key scientific user facilities. You could argue that these and their budget should go to the National Science Foundation.
I am not arguing for the continuation of the Department of Energy which was a mess ever since Jimmy Carter said shale oil is good and Amy Carter said anything nuclear was bad. But there are some important parts that must be appropriately dealt with as you sow under with salt that which never should have lived in the first place.
That’s a better idea than what members of the political class are proposing.