Sen. John Thune, by the way, was very accommodating to me back in January when I was traversing the halls of the Capitol, asking GOP senators: Should Republicans Eliminate Any Departments?
We rode together on the Senate subway, and spoke not only about this question, but also his new role in Washington. Of all the senators I’ve had the privilege to interview for HE, Thune was one of the most gracious and spent several minutes answering my questions.
But for those of you wondering, he didn’t offer a single department to eliminate:
I don't think it's realistic politically to come out and propose the elimination of departments. I do think we ought to be looking for efficiencies, overlapping missions and duplicative-type activities that are going on in the federal government. There are a lot of agencies and departments, I've come to find out, that are doing similar things, and there's a lot of redundancy. It seems to me, if you could figure out a way to eliminate a lot of that kind of duplication and overlap and redundancy, you wouldn't have to necessarily totally, in a wholesale way, eliminate departments. But you could certainly accomplish the same objectives.
