Vetoing Bureaucrats

Last time around we talked about attemped bureaucratic usurpations in the realm of gun control —the persistent effort of Executive agents to propagate rules and regulations not only different from, but contrary to, the will of Congress.

This problem of Executive legislation has become pervasive in the Federal Government, so much so that it is not inaccurate to suggest the job of writing federal law has become a prerogative of non-elected bureaucrats. By the simple device of publishing rules and regulations in the Federal Register (at a rate of better than 70,000 pages annually), Executive agencies can create more law than Congress—with its committee hearings, floor debate, and other cumbersome procedures—ever dreamt of. The legislators may deal in general concepts, but the actual guidelines, rules, and standards by which we are required to live are written by anonymous functionaries in the bowels of bureaucracy.

MS

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M. Stanton Evans

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Last time around we talked about attemped bureaucratic usurpations in the realm of gun control —the persistent effort of Executive agents to propagate rules and regulations not only different from, but contrary to, the will of Congress.

This problem of Executive legislation has become pervasive in the Federal Government, so much so that it is not inaccurate to suggest the job of writing federal law has become a prerogative of non-elected bureaucrats. By the simple device of publishing rules and regulations in the Federal Register (at a rate of better than 70,000 pages annually), Executive agencies can create more law than Congress—with its committee hearings, floor debate, and other cumbersome procedures—ever dreamt of. The legislators may deal in general concepts, but the actual guidelines, rules, and standards by which we are required to live are written by anonymous functionaries in the bowels of bureaucracy.