Growing yet more governmnet

I thought I'd never quote Ronald Reagan but here goes: "There they go again."

Have you read or heard where President Obama wants to create yet another new governmnet agency--this time to oversee regulation of banks and the loans they create and offer?

Are you kidding me?

At what point will we stop growing government and its agencies and spending?

Here's a thought--between the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, the Commerce Department and the Consumer Protection Agency--all of which already exist, thank you very much-- couldn't one of those groups handle these functions, Mr. President?

Must we create yet another agency to do this work?

This reminds me of just after 9/11 when then-President George W. Bush created a new agency--"Homeland Security"--when it seems that the question should have been asked whether or not the FBI and/or the CIA or some other agency could not or should not have been able to handle these functions.

Not only did it seem as though one or another already-existing agencies could have handled these functions, without creating a new and, in my mind, wasteful agency but, once created, it wasted, it is reported, billions of dollars.

Three quick examples:

--After spending more than $4.5 billion on screening devices to monitor the nation's ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the antiterrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate.

--In its effort to create a virtual shield around America, the Department of Homeland Security now plans to spend billions of dollars more. Although some changes are being made because of technology that has emerged in the last couple of years, many of them are planned because devices currently in use have done little to improve the nation's security, according to a review of agency documents and interviews with federal officials and outside experts.

--The contract to hire airport passenger screeners grew to $741 million from $104 million in less than a year. The screeners are failing to detect weapons at roughly the same rate as shortly after the attacks.

Heck, the wasteful spending at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was so bad so quickly that our own government did a report on its waste. (See 2nd link, below).

This whole recent example of the DHS being created when, I contend, it likely didn't need to be created anyway and then went off on a mulit-billion dollar wasteful spending blitz, shows precisely what I'm speaking of.

We create agencies we shoudn't and that we don't need AND THEN they go off wasting millions and billions of dollars of tax money.

Can someone say "stop!" please? Or how about "Don't!"?

So, again, I'm asking, cannot SOMEONE at the Commerce Department, the FDIC and/or the Federal Reserve possibly do these oversight jobs we need done--admittedly--of the banks so we, the consumers, don't get ripped-off WITHOUT creating yet another money-gobbling government agency?

PLEASE?

(And keep in mind--this is from a liberal, folks. A fiscally-conservative, socially-liberal liberal).

Link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091009/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_consumers_6
http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20060727092939-29369.pdf
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/billions_wasted_1.html