Casey Wardynski, retired U.S. Army colonel and Republican candidate for Alabama’s open fifth congressional district seat, is pushing to radically cut the size of government.
Wardynski, who served as the assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs in the Trump administration, said one way to cut spending in Washington, D.C. was to dissolve unneeded bureaucracies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Wednesday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” Wardynski argued that the DHS needed to be disbanded and explained what should replace it.
“They need to really cut spending,” he argued, “and there’s a long list of organizations that could go away. They were added during the Great Society programs under President Johnson and then finished off by Jimmy Carter, and then there’s one more that George Bush created, to his discredit, and that was Homeland Security. So I’m thinking Housing and Urban Development, Department of Education, a big hunk of [Department of] Transportation, and certainly Homeland Security needs to be taken apart.”
The candidate said the overall department wasn’t needed for national security.
“This overhead thought of trying to latch together Border Patrol, ICE, ATF, Secret Service, FEMA,” he explained, “all these very disparate organizations they have nothing in common, and if you go to their headquarters the Coast Guard’s running it because they’re the only people accustomed to running anything large. Take them apart.”
Wardynski said the DHS was involved in some nefarious actions, especially when Trump was running for president.
“Homeland Security brought in a whole lot of spying on Americans,” he said. “We’ve got the Patriot Act that probably needs to be significantly cut or done away with. The FISA courts, I don’t see any accountability there for what went on with the FBI when they were spying on the president and General Flynn and the rest of them. They need to be really brought down a peg, and so that’s what I would do with Homeland Security.”
He also said DHS was not doing what needed to be done to secure the southern border.
“Frankly this is a group that’s not on board with border security,” he said. “I had a good friend at the Pentagon, he was the Assistant Secretary for Financial Management, he was originally at Homeland Security, he went down there to Mexico at the beginning of the Trump administration talking about the wall, and these career bureaucrats at Homeland Security said ‘oh don’t pay attention to him, there’s not going to be a wall we’re not building the wall.”
Wardynski argued that this was proof that DHS needed to be dissolved.
“We need to get rid of that bunch,” he declared. “They’re not on board with what America wants, and they’re a threat to liberty and freedom here at home.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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