Thursday, January 16, 2014

Federal Register Book Case

Words as weapons sharper than knives
Makes you wonder how the other half die
--INXS

Nice visual from Senator Mike Lee. The book case houses one year's worth (the 2013 volume) of the Federal Register. The small stack of papers on top of the book case are actual laws passed by Congress and signed by the president.


Mike is not just pointing out the bureaucracy and red tape reflected by those 80,000 pages. He also wants to help people visualize the extent to which unelected officials--those people who work under the executive branch that hammer out the rules and regs appearing in the Register--are writing laws that govern us.

The constitutionality of this process is, to say the least, questionable. Congress is charged with writing law. The executive branch is charged with executing laws written by Congress and approved by the president.

We have discussed trends in the regulatory burden reflected by the Federal Register before and even studied trends in Federal Register page counts. Perhaps its time to update that chart...

1 comment:

dgeorge12358 said...

The American people want a balanced budget. They want Congress to stop this barbaric practice of perpetual deficit spending. It really, if you think about it, is a form of taxation without representation. We fought a war over that issue and we won that war.
~Mike Lee