Bureaucratic & Legal Reform in the United States

I do think it should be Bipartisan but it should not be lead by Barack Obama considering he isn't exactly that good at cutting spending considering his record. We'll see if he can actually save himself this coming election though at the rate things are going I doubt it but he still has one more year to change many of his policies to which I think he won't do but we'll see.

 

Obama unveils plan to streamline government.

Summary:
*He wants Reagan-era power to consolidate departments if it will cut costs, which will then get an up-or-down vote in Congress later. It will be the first major reorganization of government since that time.
*The first consolidation plan revealed will combine the Department of Congress, the Small Business Administration, the Office of the Trade Representative, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Trade and Development Agency.
*Other consolidation plans will be rolled out shortly.
*I'm guessing this will be a theme in the SOTU address.





http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/13/10148099-obama-seeks-power-to-merge-agencies

President Barack Obama on Friday took aim at his government's own messy bureaucracy, prodding Congress to give him greater power to merge agencies and promising he would start by collapsing six major economic departments into one. Pressing Republicans on one of their own political issues, Obama said it was time for an "effective, lean government."

Obama wants the type of reorganizational authority last held by a president when Ronald Reagan was in office. Obama's version would be a so-called consolidation authority allowing him to propose only mergers that promise to save money and shrink government. The deal would help Obama considerably by entitling him to an up-or-down vote from Congress in 90 days.

Recommended: Obama formally requests increase in debt ceiling
Still, final say would remain with lawmakers, both on whether to grant Obama this fast-track authority and then in deciding whether to approve any of his specific ideas.

"We can do this better," Obama declared in an event with business owners at the White House, even presenting slides to help make his case.

"So much of the argument out there all the time is up at 40,000 feet, these abstract arguments about who's conservative or who's liberal," Obama said. "Most Americans ? and certainly most small business owners ? you guys are just trying to figure out how do we make things work, how do we apply common sense. And that's what this is about."

In an election year and a political atmosphere of tighter spending, Obama's move is about more than improving a giant bureaucracy. He is attempting to directly counter Republican arguments that he has presided over the kind of government regulation, spending and debt that can undermine the economy ? a dominant theme of the emerging presidential campaign.

Republicans have often aligned themselves with smaller government. So politically, Obama is trying to put the onus on Republicans in the House and Senate to show why they would be against the pursuit of leaner government.

From Capitol Hill, a spokesman for Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in the Senate, pledged Obama's plan would get a careful review.

But the spokesman, Don Stewart, also said: "After presiding over one of the largest expansions of government in history, and a year after raising the issue in his last State of the Union, it's interesting to see the president finally acknowledge that Washington is out of control."

Obama has an imperative to deliver. He made the promise to come up with a smart reorganization of the government in his last State of the Union speech last January.

At the time, Obama grabbed attention by pointing out the absurdity of government inefficiency. In what he called his favorite example, Obama said: "The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they're in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked."

The White House said the problem is serious for consumers who turn to their government for help and often do not know where to begin.

Not in decades has the government undergone a sustained reorganization of itself. Presidents have tried from time to time, but each part of the bureaucracy has its own defenders inside and