The Department of Energy was created by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 after the oil crisis. The idea was to end the United States dependence on foreign oil. How’s that working out for you, America?

Carter and every President after him promised Energy independence and never kept his promise. If the same old Department of Energy is not doing the job – it is time to reform the thing and hopefully save some bucks in the process.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has a blog named the Bottom Line. Big Bureaucracy entered their “spending challenge”. So far we identified savings in bureaucracy cuts, stimulus money cuts and education cuts.

Let’s take the hatchet and go line by line through the 2011 budget of the Department of Energy proposed by President Obama.

There are certain activities performed by the DOE that should be transferred back to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers where they originally started. That would be the following:

- Strategic Petroleum Reserve;
- Science;
- Environmental Clean-up (Defense and non-defense);
- Power Marketing Administration.

Atomic Energy Defense Activities (weapons, naval reactors and defense non-proliferation) should be transferred to Department of the Army.

Energy Information Administration should be transferred to Economics and Statistics Administration (Department of Commerce).

The budget for the Departmental Administration should be transferred to Department of Defense for the transition.

Loans that were already made by the Department of Energy should be transferred to the Treasury to be serviced until paid.

Tax-payer already appropriate 5 billion dollars for science each year for the Department of Energy. All energy research related to the national security should be performed under the science programs that will be transferred to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. All DOE extra research programs that are not in the science budget should be abolished and the free market and the private sector should be able to take care of those issues. Scrap the following programs:

- Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy – $2.4 billion
- Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability – $186 million
- Nuclear Energy – $824 million
- Fossil Energy Research and Development – 587 million
- Energy Transformation Acceleration Fund – 300 million

The proposed $500 million for Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program in 2010 should not be approved.

Total: we save 4.8 billion dollars and we close the Department of Energy.

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