Department of Energy

The Department of Energy, what exactly do you know about it? Do you know who started it or what its purpose was? Do you know what it evolved to?

The Department of Energy was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on August 4, 1977, and later started operations on October 1, 1977. The main purpose was to promote energy independence following the 1973 oil shortage, and insure through active policies, that the situation wouldn’t happen again.

Several Nuclear Agencies were also lumped into this new department, as an oversight to atomic control and security. These sub groups now include the EIA, NNSA, OST, NMC, CIAC, and also the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The agency now employs some 16,100 federal employees and some 100,000 contract workers. Their annual operating budget in 2006 was 23.4 billion.

It seems this is but one more bureaucratic department, that does nothing more then soak up taxpayer’s money. I can see the need to oversee the nuclear situations nationwide, but I can also see where that group could be absorbed into other branches of government.

If we intend to pay down our debt, we need to consolidate programs and groups, and eliminate the Departments that don’t work.

If the intent of this department was to insure energy independence, it has failed miserably, in much the same way as President Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. If you take the eventual cost of Carter’s policies on us in this point in time, his administration has cost the taxpayers in 2008 ……..now sit down……….1 Trillion, 800 billion dollars, and climbing rapidly to bail out everyone but us the taxpayers.