Regulation: The Secret American Tax
By Rob on Domestic Issues
Susan Dudley:
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Before leaving town earlier this month, Congress approved nearly $300 billion in increased spending. But spending, supported through taxes, is not the only way the federal government diverts resources from the private sector to accomplish its goals. The other is through regulation and, in recent years, that too has increased at an impressive rate.
Every year, over 60 federal departments, agencies, and commissions employ a combined staff of roughly 242,000 full-time employees to write and enforce federal regulations. Together, they issue thousands of new rules each year. Like the programs supported by taxes, regulations can provide benefits to Americans. Unlike the direct spending supported by taxes, however, there is no mechanism — like the fiscal budget and appropriations process — for keeping track of the off-budget spending required by regulation.
Regulations are, in effect, a hidden tax on Americans. We must rely on proxies to measure this tax, such as the number of pages printed in the Federal Register, or the size of the budgets of regulatory agencies.
Consider this. The federal tax code occupies 2 volumes, each thicker than the Bible. But, the Code of Federal Regulations is much larger; it now occupies over 20 feet of shelf space. And it is growing. In 2004, the federal government printed 78,851 pages of new rules and announcements in the daily Federal Register. At 4 minutes per page that would require 2.5 people reading 8 hours per day for a year, just to keep up with the new rules and pronouncements (to say nothing of actually complying with them).
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I blame the Republicans.
No, I’m not kidding.
This kind of government-growing nonsense is to be expected from Democrats, who ceased all pretensions toward being interested in limited government long ago. The Republicans in office now came to power (and came to majority) largely on promises made to the American people about limited government and smaller spending, two ideals that are supposedly primary principles within the GOP. They have betrayed those promises and the core aspirations of Republicanism to not only increase spending but accelerate the growth of pointless and self-defeating bureaucracy.
Were modern day Democrats not a bunch of limp-wristed, socially-Marxist Michael Moore sycophants Americans would have a good alternative to voting Republican.
Read the whole thing.
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