When President Obama and Mitt Romney
are jousting about taxes during their Wednesday night debate, one or
both candidates might correctly point out that the Constitution
explicitly forbids taxation without representation. They would do well
to also point out that it guarantees against regulation without
representation. Article I, Section 1 states, “All legislative powers
herein granted shall be vested in a Congress.”
In practice, however, that protection has significantly eroded over the
years. Both candidates could win many voters to their side by pledging
to do something about it.
Congress eagerly delegates rule-making responsibilities to unelected executive branch agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Food and Drug Administration, National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and way too many others to name here. What’s more, those agencies have discovered several loopholes in the legal constraints on delegation. Closing them would make a winning issue for politicians across the political spectrum.
A Competitive Enterprise Institute working paper, “Tip of the Costberg: On the Invalidity of All Cost of Regulation Estimates and the Need to Compile Them Anyway,” assembles total federal regulatory costs of $1.8 trillion — equivalent to half the federal budget (tenthousandcommandments.com). Guarding against overregulation without representation could help bring that figure down. It is long past time we did so.
Congress eagerly delegates rule-making responsibilities to unelected executive branch agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Food and Drug Administration, National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and way too many others to name here. What’s more, those agencies have discovered several loopholes in the legal constraints on delegation. Closing them would make a winning issue for politicians across the political spectrum.
A Competitive Enterprise Institute working paper, “Tip of the Costberg: On the Invalidity of All Cost of Regulation Estimates and the Need to Compile Them Anyway,” assembles total federal regulatory costs of $1.8 trillion — equivalent to half the federal budget (tenthousandcommandments.com). Guarding against overregulation without representation could help bring that figure down. It is long past time we did so.
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