This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 3rd, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Newly minted Senator Rand Paul would like to cut $500 billion out of the federal budget this year.

On the chopping block is about 40% of the Department of Homeland Security.

Cato Institute Legal Policy analyst David Ritgers,

author of a forthcoming report on abolishing the Department of Homeland

Security comments.

Well let me start by saying that I think that the Department of Homeland Security is a pretty

ill-conceived umbrella for 22 former agencies.

He used to belong elsewhere.

So I would start with abolishing, but if we're going to go with reducing, there's a lot of things

that we can do to put meat on the bones

of that 40% that will be productive for the taxpayer.

I'll talk about three things.

First, let's talk about grants that go to states and localities, mostly in areas

that are properly goals achieved with the funds of those states and localities and not federal funds.

Second, we can talk about the structure of DHS.

There are some savings I think we can eek out of reducing the number of agencies under the umbrella of DHS.

So first, moving to grants,

we give out about $3 billion a year to states and localities via DHS

a total of about 31 billion since 9-11.

This funding is corrosive to any sense of fiscal federalism that state and local leaders really should be exercising.

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