Ron Paul said Tuesday that Americans would be better off without a trio of major government agencies.
“We can do without the IRS, we can do without the TSA and we can do without the VA and do a much better job,” he said of the Internal Revenue Service, the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
{mosads}“We lived without the IRS for 135 years,” Paul added on Fox Business Network. “We’ve only had the TSA for a short period of time and it has done us no good except give us long lines. The VA is in shambles because bureaucracy doesn’t work.
“All of these are proof that bureaucratic management doesn’t work. Instead of trying to fix it, we should have an alternative.”
The IRS, TSA and VA have all made national headlines in recent weeks following controversies at each agency.
The House Judiciary Committee is considering impeaching IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in hearings that start Tuesday.
On Monday, the TSA removed a top security chief from her post while the agency is struggling with overwhelmed security lines and long wait times nationwide.
And VA Secretary Bob McDonald outraged critics on Monday by comparing veterans’ wait times at his agency’s clinics to similar lines at Disney parks.
Paul aimed his fire most heavily at the TSA, arguing that the agency offers no benefits for the inconvenience it causes travelers.
“They haven’t provided anything,” he said. “All they’ve done is undermine the liberties of the American people. They haven’t been proven to have stopped any terrorist attack.
“The government was essentially in charge of security before 9/11, and they did a lousy job so they got rewarded by making the government much, much bigger,” the former Texas GOP House representative said.
“It hasn’t worked. It’s led to this bankruptcy of ideas and the bankruptcy of this country and a lot of arguments going on because they rejected the notions of liberty. Liberty solves these problems but bureaucracies do not.”