The Tyranny of the Federal Registry

With gas prices pushing $4 a gallon, a declining dollar and a mortgage crisis that refuses to go away, our nation’s economy is becoming the number one issue for the 2008 presidential campaign. There should be, however, some healthy skepticism regarding any candidate who implies that such things can be successfully controlled from Washington. Experience has clearly shown- centralized control under the operation of federal busybodies doesn’t make for a successful scenario. More times than not, it does more harm than good.

For example: the current Ethanol food crisis is a obvious demonstration of how government intervention proves to be a cure that’s far worse than the disease. Instead of improving a situation, government activism has the propensity for producing the opposite result. The pundits call this effect- “the Law of Unintended Consequences.” It is a very real phenomenon indeed, and issues forth most readily from that vain impulse of Liberal do-goodism.

One of the worst cases of this abuse is the federal government’s hidden tax that emanates from over-regulation. The cost of complying with all of our nation’s spider web of federal dictates was estimated by the U.S. Small Business Administration to be $1.14 trillion in 2006. That’s almost half of the expressed, total budget for 2006. Amazingly, this inflicted abuse on the part of unelected bureaucrats is an amount equal to about 10% of our GDP. Combined with the normal budget items, that’s a total tax burden of almost a full third of our economy’s productivity. Given our current economic struggles, perhaps the best thing Washington can do now is ease off the oppression!

Naturally, these expenses we struggle to pay now originally came to us by some smiling politician who simply wanted to grace us with benevolent gifts of government largesse. How sweet. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice…

These rules taxing almost every conceivable behavior imaginable are published in the Federal Register. In 2006, the Register grew to a massive 75,000 pages and issued almost 4,000 Nanny State guidelines on how we best behave. God gave Moses 10.

The EPA, the Dept. of Commerce, the Dept. of Agriculture, the Dept. of Interior and the Dept. of Treasury accounted for 44% of all new additions in 2006.

A report from last year says that the 60-plus federal departments, agencies and commissions are not content with what they have. They are busy creating about 4,000 more rules that will cost an additional $100 million to individuals and small business.

The worst aspect of this growing tyranny is the attending political unaccountability. There’s very little influence at the ballot box over these governmental authorities. Our elected leaders come and go, but these bureaucrat turf warriors remain forever entrenched and beyond our reach.

How can we possibly reverse this trend? Well, it’s certainly not by adding more agencies through Big Government programs like Universal Healthcare. We should lobby our representatives for more transparency and disclosure in government. We should also begin holding Congress accountable for the bad things these departments do. Finally, there should be a requirement that Congress and the President give signed authority before a new rule goes into effect.

Our Constitutional form of government was never intended to be administered by unelected bureaucrats with this type of power over the people. This is “regulation without representation” and a condition of servitude that a free people should never permit.

The cost we face now in unmonitored and unlimited regulation is more than the total federal budget of 1987. Something is desperately wrong with this trend. This election year, we should try to reverse it. The first step-- not falling prey to that old, Liberal, siren song that says, “more government is the answer!” (send comments to: WFC83197@aol.com, or mail to POB 114, Jacksboro, TN 37757)