America in the Balance
The Framers established a representative republic in which it was intentionally difficult to enact legislation, requiring majority support in both houses of Congress with presidential concurrence or a congressional super-majority to create new law.
The rise of the administrative state since the New Deal has, in large swathes of our lives, neatly reversed this paradigm. Today, consequential new regulations with the force of law are readily enacted by executive branch agencies. These new laws can only be stopped by the cumbersome legislative procedure mandated by the Constitution.
As Clinton adviser Paul Begala put it concerning executive orders in 1998, “Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool.” Well, Clinton was a piker compared to Obama in the ruling by decree department. Today’s executive branch agencies form the point of the spear in the Obama administration’s War on Jobs.
Take the Environmental Protection Agency. EPA’s regulation factory is the only thing humming along at full capacity in Obama’s America. Our planet’s self-appointed savior is issuing new rules at breakneck speed, intent on stamping out coal-fired power plants, home renovation firms, and dusty farms. Oh, and don’t forget the automobile. If the internal combustion engine can’t deliver the 56.2 mpg fleet average decreed by EPA, well, good riddance. It’s bad for the planet. Drive an electric. And when the coal-free grid of the future fails to deliver a charge for your high-priced skateboard, you can ride a unicorn to work—if you’re still employed—the public transit workers will probably be on strike.
Think I’m overstating the level of congressional impotence? Consider that the Food and Drug Administration has such a chokehold on the American medical device industry that the entire Minnesota congressional delegation—Al Franken and Michele Bachmann dancing together cheek-to-cheek—is reduced to shaking its collective fist at the people with the real power in Washington.
WASHINGTON - Citing concerns about long approval times for medical devices, Minnesota's congressional delegation joined forces to send a letter to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg asking the agency to speed up the approval process.
"We are very concerned that delays in this process are hindering innovation, delaying patient access to new therapies, and undermining the US medical industry's global leadership," said the letter signed by both Senators and eight House members.
Against this backdrop of regulatory overreach the crucial character of the debt limit debate stands in sharp relief. The power of the purse is perhaps the last bit of congressional authority yet to be punted someplace else. And amidst the various mechanisms established to keep most spending on autopilot, the federal debt ceiling may be the last significant constraint on the administrative state’s kudzu-like growth. Under current law, if Congress fails to act, then much of the federal government—including the various alphabet soup agencies affirmatively destroying our economy—runs into a brick wall.
The president and his team planned this crisis by not raising the debt ceiling when still in possession of bicameral super-majorities; the notion on the left being to force Republicans to accede to a tax hike beyond the significant increases already programmed into current law, thereby ratifying Obamanomics as the new bipartisan economic model for decades to come.
Here’s wishing for a long hot summer of gridlock.
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Comments :
Jul '11
Re: America in the Balance
I am voting for gridlock as well. Anything other than cuts alone will be a failure.
For a corrupt organization, the FDA is remarkably inefficient.
Oct '10
Re: America in the Balance
Don't forget that the EPA budget has doubled under the Obama administration. And the Department of Energy is the largest private equity fund in the world, passing out money to politically connected companies in the "green" fleecing of America.
Edited on Jul 11, 2011 at 4:33pmDec '10
Re: America in the Balance
Gridlock would be fine with me, especially if we managed to get a wheat/chaff culling out of it (dream on!).
However, those that sit mostly on the outside should be aware that these regulations are usually driven by court actions against federal agencies. The agencies have no choice! Oh my!
And the agencies pay people to sue them. This is every day, in the trenches. The Sierra Club, or the Environmental Defense Fund, or the Natural Resources Defense Council all have sallaried staff and attorneys, paid for through tax deductable donations and direct grants from the agencies that they are suing. Whom does the private landowner have, or the business, or the industry (the ones paying for the grants)? It is extremely difficult to find a client willing to counter-sue and take agencies to court, given that they are paying for most of both sides, regardless of outcome. They acquiesce. They do not fight the monolith. This is where corporatism comes from, as the attorneys from both sides know there is no end of money fighting for the expansion of regulation and only a tiny, finite pool of money that may stand against it.
Edited on Jul 11, 2011 at 4:55pmAug '10
Re: America in the Balance
CJRun:
However, those that sit mostly on the outside should be aware that these regulations are usually driven by court actions against federal agencies. The agencies have no choice! Oh my!
And the agencies pay people to sue them.
Cute. Very cute.
They are paying to act out their own rape fantasies. And then they cry, "Rape!"
We shouldn't be fooled.
Edited on Jul 11, 2011 at 7:56pmAug '10
Re: America in the Balance
In my little corner of the world the California Air Resources Board has, by fiat, extended its territorial waters from 24 to 40 nautical miles.
The previous 24 NM limit was driving coast-wise containership traffic smack dab into the middle of the US Navy's Pt Mugo missile range.
The reason the ships avoid the near coastal route is that CARB has designated it a clean fuel shipping zone. That means burning ultra low sulphur diesel (ULSD).
These ship are huge (1150 feet is the max for LA LB and OAK). Their main engines are not designed to burn ULSD. They shut down at low speeds and give harbor pilots the vapors.
CARB admits as much:
A comment by board member Ron Roberts sums up the situation. "One of the hardest things about being on the board is separating fact from political fancy. I think politics have entered the picture too much,".
Bottom line: these ships can go a lot further than 16 nautical miles to avoid CARB and the anti-business climate of my home state.
Oh, and the extra cost of moving whatever is in that box is built in to our purchase price of that item.
Re: America in the Balance
Get ready. Obama and his MSM choir are gearing up to blame the next downward leg in Great Depression, The Sequel on Republican deficit reduction
Got that?
May '10
Re: America in the Balance
Three questions:
Dec '10
Re: America in the Balance
I don't know why they get away with it, but the whole thing makes me want to burn down my shop building and then set in a corner and cry for a week.
Every single thing you go to do as a business is regulated to the Nth degree.
It is killing us, slowly, but killing us all the same.
I'd go out in the driveway and scream, but the city council has declared that any auditory expulsion above 80 dB is considered a nuisance punishable by a $500 fine . . .