By Rich Kozlovich
Editor's Note: I originally published this on Wednesday, January 8, 2014. I've now updated this to meet today's reality. While my National Debt Counter still shows 29 trillion, the claim now is we're 30 trillion dollars in debt. Both are unacceptable and will doom the nation if not stopped and reversed. RK
In 2013 the United States Congress was criticized for not
getting things done. The Congress “only” passed 65 new laws. Of course we have
to understand that one year they passed over three hundred new laws.
What is really important to understand is when new laws
are passed the baton of power is passed to the permanent bureaucracies, whose
function is to make even more laws called – “rules”! In 2013 there was an
average of 56 new regulations resulting from each law passed totaling 3659 new laws
called – “rules”! That multiplier has been as low as 12 per new law, but that
was in 2006 when Congress passed 321 new laws. If you average out the
multipliers over the last ten years the average multiplier is 25.36.
So what’s the rest of the story? Last year the states
passed over 40,000 new laws. If we make a broad assumption that the average
multiplier applies to the states we now have a potential of 1,014,400 new laws
called – “rules!” Rules created by unaccountable bureaucrats, with their own
agendas and views of reality, and who, generally speaking, went to college and
then into government.
During the first five years of the Obama administration regulatory costs increased by $500 billion dollars, “with $112 billion in
regulatory compliance costs in 2013 alone, and predicted that the burden would
continue to increase this year to as much as $143 billion”. The federal registry, where all the
regulations are listed, contain 80,224 pages this year alone. It’s estimated that in ten years at the
current rate of regulatory growth there will generate approximately 900,000 new
pages of regulations, which will be on top of the approximately 800,000 pages of regulations passed in the previous ten years.
We
also have to look at who benefits from laws and the regulations they generate. In this kind of hyper-regulatory, high tax
economy many of these laws and regulations are promoted by businesses that want
to make it harder for companies that will be, or are, competitors. As a result “all aspects of business, entrepreneurship degenerates into “bribery and diplomacy.” Instead of focusing
on creating value for customers, entrepreneurs spend their time lobbying for
favors or to avoid penalties, trying to discern the government’s next move,
anticipating or adapting to the newest regulations.”
But this was to be expected from a party that loves big government
and “more” laws and regulations - all the better to control our lives. What about the administrations that have been
considered conservative, anti-big government and opposed to all these
regulations? There were more regulations
passed during George W. Bush’s administration than any president since Richard
Nixon. Furthermore this idea there is
some invisible divide between the left and the so-called right regarding
regulations and the promotion of the all powerful state is an illusion.
“The modern regulatory state is a bipartisan enterprise: During the half-century before President Obama's election,
the greatest growth in regulation came under Presidents Richard Nixon and
George W. Bush. And the Bush
administration set the stage for many of the Obama initiatives that Republicans
are now attacking. Dodd-Frank's policy of designating some financial firms as
"too big to fail" is a codification of the Paulson-Bernanke bailout
approach of 2008. It was the Bush Treasury Department that first proposed a
financial consumer-protection agency, and the Bush Environmental Protection
Agency that first proposed regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
The Obama energy rules were authorized — and in some cases, such as the
light-bulb ban, required — by a 2007 statute that President Bush vigorously
championed.”
What about Richard M. Nixon? Nixon was a strange man and still an enigma to
many, and understandably so, because Nixon was the first to advocate what was
called a New Federalism, which would ‘devolve’ power to state and local
governments. But he was the first one to
jump on the environmental band wagon promoted by the first Earth Day in 1970. He believed this was a precursor of public
concern and he wanted to benefit from it politically.
Eventually
he passed the Clear Air Act, the Clear Water Act the Endangered Species
Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, requiring environmental impact statements for federal projects. He created the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA). All of which create virtual
lava flows of scientifically dubious regulations, creating outrageous burdens
on the American people, and the American economy. Furthermore, all
these laws and agencies give rise to lawsuits by activists that plague
economic development with legal costs, studies and delays.
What is the cost of all these federal regulations to the
nation’s people? One point eight trillion dollars a year! And I have no idea what kind of costs of all these state laws impose on society. So what is the solution - at least at the federal level? For anyone trying to research just how
many regulations become attached to any federal law, I wish you luck,
and a lot of time. You will find it's very difficult. Take for instance
the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) passed by Jimmy Carter and ultimately the cause of the housing bubble that collapsed in 2008 causing a worldwide recession.
As best as I can tell there were 25 regulations attached to that law, but that's deceptive because under each regulation there are Subparts and Appendices, which expands the impact of each regulation. In effect, each
regulation, or rule, becomes part of a maze of rules and regulations all
presented as "explanations".
The ultimate and actual number of
regulations? Who knows, and personally, I doubt anyone knows for sure.
Rule 25 of CRA had five Subparts and two Appendices. That's seven additional
components, i.e. "explanations", which are in reality new laws passed by
unelected bureaucrats.
Let's assume that's that's typical for
each CRA regulation, which I'm sure it isn't, we can now multiply those
25 regulations by seven and we get 175 "explanations" Those
"explanations" are now what we are absolutely required to follow in
order to comply with one rule of one new federal law. When you get
involved with environmental laws, the numbers are off the charts, and
hard to track, and I'm sure there are far more than five Subparts and
two Appendices attached to each regulation, however, for analysis purposes, let's call this the "seven parts per regulation rule"!
In 2020 there were 178 federal
laws passed with 3354 regulations. That's about 19 regulations per
law, but that doesn't include the Sections, Subsections and Appendices,
which no one lists. You have to actually find the law and follow the
"eyes rolling back into your head" tedium to get that answer.
However, if we make a bit of a broad assumption using the "seven parts per regulation rule" for each regulation that turns those 19 regulations into 133 "explanations" that are in fact laws. If there are an average of 8 it becomes 152. Nine becomes 171. Suppose the actual number is fifteen? That translates into 285 "explanations" that "must" be followed to be in compliance with federal law. That makes them de-facto laws never passed by Congress, and the "administrative state" is now in charge, not Congress. Do you doubt that?
If you analyze this chart we find since 2003 Congress passed 3319 laws. The bureaucrats created 65,582 rules averaging 25 rules per law. If we use the "seven parts per regulation rule" we now have 459,074 explanations that are often
contradictory, absolutely complicated, and invariably, more interpretations, clarifications and explanations will follow as the years go by. If we make an assumption it could be 15 parts per rule, we get a mind boggling 983,730 "explanations". All of which are in fact mandatory, and worse yet:
At least 4,450 federal crimes are embedded in those
laws and regulations (with some 500 new crimes added per decade) – often for
minor infractions like failing to complete or file precisely correct paperwork
for selling orchids or importing wood for guitars. Neither inability to understand complex edicts,
lack of knowledge that they could possibly exist, nor absence of intent to
violate them is a defense, and the “crime” can bring military swat teams
through doors, and land “violators” in prison for months or years.
The administrative state’s battle for dominance over the Congress and the nation is pretty much a fait accompli!
No one can fix this piecemeal because it is a
foundational issue and until that foundational problem is recognized it will
never be solved. So what is that foundational issue? Passage of the 16th
and 17th Amendments in 1913, which laid the foundation for our
doom.
The 16th amendment gave the federal government
the right to tax income. This gave them
the right to confiscate an unending amount of society’s money, [called their
fair share] and spend it like drunken sailors. That turned the federal
government into an insatiable beast that can never be fed to satisfaction,
creating debt that is threatening the stability of not only the nation, but the world.
The 17th amendment changed how Senators are
chosen. The Founding Fathers were determined to prevent the federal government
from becoming an all too powerful entity that was centralized and out of
control. In order to do this they created a government that wasn’t
supposed to do very much creating a true balance of power between
the central government and the state governments. In those days the word
‘state’ didn’t mean province, it meant an independent nation. So the Senators
were chosen by the state governments to be ambassadors to the federal
government in order to stop power grabbing by the central government.
After passage of the 17th Amendment they would
be elected by popular vote, exactly what the Founding Fathers wanted to
avoid, because that was already what the House of Representatives was for. That
amendment destroyed the balance of power - the 10th Amendment
notwithstanding. As long as the 17th exists the 10th is
meaningless, and by misusing the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution the
federal government can overturn any and all local authority, and individual rights
guaranteed under the Constitution.
“The deterioration of the Constitution’s separation of, and balance of,
powers means that regulators and bureaucrats now make most laws……The executive
branch increasingly imposes its will: President Obama and his administration
repeatedly say they are not going to wait for Congress…...”
What about the
Supreme Court? Don’t they understand how
the Commerce Clause is being misused?
Until the Rehnquist court in 1995 SCOTUS never saw a law that exceeded Congress’s
power under the Commerce Clause for sixty years. In fact,
they held the view that no matter how slight the impact might be on commerce it
would now be subject to federal control.
If there ever was a system for abuse and tyranny this was it, and now
the states were powerless to do anything about it.
Roman Senator Cato the Elder was born in 234 BC and believed
that Carthage was too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Therefore he gave
speeches ending in the phrase [no matter the topic of the speech] “Carthago
delenda est”, “Carthage Must be Destroyed".
The 16th and 17th
amendments are our modern Carthage – too dangerous to exist. This
is foundational. The only fix is the repeal of the 16th and 17th
amendments. After that - everything else will fall into
place. But first we must be willing to recognize the 16th
and 17th amendments really are the enemy.
Our modern Carthage!
Sedecim et septemdecim delenda est!
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