Donald Trump said if he’s elected one of his first orders will be to eliminate the Department of Education. Not a bad start. But he should quickly move on to the other DOE, the Department of Energy. Please pull the plug.

The Cabinet-level department was created when Democratic President Jimmy Carter, whose energy policy was ruinous, signed the Department of Energy Organization Act, which he had asked Congress to pass. In “business” since 1977, the Energy Department has not generated, in any way that we can satisfactorily verify, a single watt of energy for consumers.

But it has blocked quite a bit of energy production. The Department has “forced the closure or prevented the opening of more power facilities” than it ever “helped create or operate,” says H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute. Another friend whose insight we also trust, Steve Milloy of junkscience.com, says the DOE “has no function other than to manage the moribund national labs and their cleanups, and to hand out money to energy scammers.”

Almost 30 years ago there were legitimate complaints that the Energy Department had, since its inception, “grown in tax dollars spent and functions performed,” and spent nearly all of its existence “searching for something to do.” 

“The Department of Energy not only has strayed from its original mission of energy oversight, but also has failed to conduct efficiently the services it now provides,” says the Heritage Foundation’s 1995 report How to Close Down the Department of Energy.

It further noted the remarks of Victor Rezendes of the Government Accountability Office who testified that year that the Department “suffers from significant management problems, ranging from poor environmental management… to major internal inefficiencies rooted in poor oversight.”

“These management problems,” said Heritage, “and the inefficiencies that flow from them have been caused largely by DOE’s continual efforts to re-align itself and justify its existence.”

Don’t think that the DOE has improved over time and is now effectively serving the American people. Bureaucracies don’t work that way. They get worse. The late historian Robert Conquest captured the essence of bureaucracy when he said “the behavior of any bureaucratic organization, can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” In this case, environmental zealots who want to curb energy production.

Ronald Reagan promised in 1980 that, if elected, he would eliminate the Energy Department. Even though the Department was not yet four years old when he entered the White House, and his first Energy Secretary James Edwards said he had gone to Washington to “work myself out of a job,” Reagan failed.

At least one other attempt to close the Department was made in the mid-1990s when Republicans introduced a bill that would have taken it apart, privatizing its assets and transferring its functions, such as defense-related nuclear weapons responsibilities, to other parts of the government.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was Energy secretary under Trump for nearly three years, pledged to kill the DOE if elected president, though later said he regretted “recommending its elimination” after he had been “briefed on so many” of its “vital functions.”

As a presidential candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also said he would cut the Department of Energy, as well as Education, Commerce, and the IRS. We hope that if DeSantis ever occupies the White House, he won’t backtrack on his commitment.

We’re not going to argue that none of the federal departments is necessary. A few are. But the ones that have been mentioned here — along with Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Agriculture — not only violate the principles of federalism, they are counterproductive.

“We got along without departments of Energy, Education, and Commerce for nearly 200 years, and education and energy was better for sure,” says Burnett. “They are a drain on resources and a wedge to control states’ internal policies with federal money with no net positive return to the nation.”

Despite the burden they put on the country, the departments are deeply rooted in Washington. No matter who is in the White House and which party has the majority in Congress, abolishing them is nearly impossible.

But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be starved slowly of the taxpayer dollars that they feed on like leeches.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board