The report calls for merging of the Labor and Education departments. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Sweeping Trump proposal seeks to shrink government, merge agencies Much of the ambitious plan is likely to die a swift death in Congress.

The Trump administration issued an ambitious proposal Thursday to shrink government and reorganize how services are delivered to citizens, a plan that touches on nearly every corner of American life, from pizza to postal delivery.

The proposal would merge the departments of Education and Labor into a new Department of Education and the Workforce. Safety net services and food aid would be consolidated into the newly named Department of Health and Public Welfare, and rural housing assistance, now at the Department of Agriculture, would shift to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.


Food safety programs, now overseen by the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration, would be consolidated into a new Federal Food Safety Agency.

The proposal is the result of a yearlong effort by Mick Mulvaney, a small-government crusader who leads the White House Office of Management and Budget. He called the plan the biggest reorganization of government since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era New Deal.

“It’s been almost 100 years since anybody really reorganized the government at this type of scale. It’s been since FDR and his New Deal, where he changed the way the government worked,” Mulvaney said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “We haven’t changed it very much since then, which means we’re almost 20 percent into the 21st century, but we’re still dealing a government that is from the early 20th century.”

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Nearly every administration has sought to streamline government bureaucracy, but attempts at structural reforms have run afoul of Congress or been abandoned because they didn’t cut costs. The last successful effort was in 2002, when Congress established the Department of Homeland Security after Sept. 11, 2001.

Mulvaney’s proposal borrows from previous administrations, but it still faces a steep climb. Congress currently lacks the bandwidth and bipartisan geniality required to push complex reforms, and with midterm elections looming, the document could be dismissed as a political messaging tool rather than a serious proposal.

“A wish list for anti-government ideologues,” is how Rep. Gerry Connelly of Virginia, the No. 2 Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, described the proposal. “Like every other plan rolled out by this administration, this is a blueprint for failure that would create dysfunction and chaos in the federal government.”

The 132-page plan highlights some of the absurdities of government bureaucracy that President Donald Trump’s predecessors, Democrat and Republican alike, also tried to fix. Pepperoni pizzas, for example, are regulated differently from cheese pizzas, something President Barack Obama noted in his own reorganization plan .

“One of my favorites: If you have a saltwater fish — you have a salmon, and it’s in the ocean, it’s governed by the Department of Commerce. Once it swims up river, it’s governed by the Department of Interior. And to get there, it has to go up a fish ladder governed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.” Mulvaney said. “This is stupid.”

Changes that don’t require consent from Congress already are in the process of being put into place. For example, government employee background checks, now the responsibility of the Office of Personnel Management, will be transferred to the Department of Defense.

There’s a lot more Trump can do without approval from Congress. Entire divisions — and their budgets — can be moved from agency to agency, for example. But bold moves risk infuriating Congress and could lead to micromanagement by lawmakers, which in turn makes reform even more difficult.

“If the executive branch wants to do it tomorrow, they could. But the quicker they do it, the higher the likelihood Congress comes back the following fiscal year and undoes everything,” said Thomas Hill, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“One thing to consider is they have no intention of this actually coming to fruition, that it’s messaging,” Hill said. “The White House wants to point out that it wants to drain the swamp and here are the entrenched bureaucrats stepping in.”

OMB Deputy Director Margaret Weichert said change is necessary to bring government into the modern age. Other countries, for example, combine functions of the Labor and Education departments under a single roof.

“The goal isn’t to downgrade any of the major missions of the two organizations, but really integrate and, frankly, upgrade our thinking about education and labor and preparing children for the workforce, as well as re-skilling adults,” Weichert told reporters.

She couldn’t explain why the administration chose the word “welfare” to label the proposed social services agency, a word lawmakers deliberately shed in the 1970s with the establishment of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“What I can say is we’re far more interested in the content and substance of the proposals,” Weichert said. “It’s business as usual in Washington to politicize things and miss the spirit and real drive for change. I’m hopeful we don’t get distracted by political debates.”

The proposal would eliminate the popular Community Development Block Grant program and limit government mortgage subsidies. Government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be privatized and shrunk.

Statistical agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, would be consolidated under the Commerce Department. Their data collection, including surveys, would be integrated and streamlined.

The plan seeks to restructure and possibly privatize the U.S. Postal Service. Power assets owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Department of Energy would be sold and clean-up programs housed at several departments would be consolidated within the Environmental Protection Agency’s multibillion-dollar Superfund program.

The Army Corps of Engineers’ civilian work would be moved out of the Department of Defense to the Department of Transportation. Management of dams, ecosystem-restoration work and the Clean Water Act permitting program would go to the Department of the Interior, a proposal that mirrors efforts by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.),

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee, praised the proposed changes Thursday, saying that the "federal government is long overdue for a serious overhaul."

Sarah Ferris, Alex Guillèn, Annie Snider, Katy O’Donnell, Kimberly Hefling and Michael Stratford contributed to this report