Response to a Regulator

(This is my response to a letter to the Editor criticizing my view of government regulations)

 

 

 

        I am grateful for Nancy Theodore’s lucid explanation of Washington’s rule-making process outlined in her October 22^nd letter to the editor.  She obviously knows a lot about that, having spent 31 years writing regulations and policy for the federal government. 

          That’s the difference between her and me: she sees everything from inside the Beltway where over 2,700,000 federal employees insulated from the real world collectively think they know how Americans should lead their lives.  Of course some of the rules and regulations are good and necessary.  But, it’s not the legitimacy of the process that Ms. Theodore praises that I question so much as its excesses.  Contrary to Ms. Theodore’s assertion, this is not the system the framers of our Constitution had in mind.  But there’s more.
          When Ms. Theodore in an earlier letter defended President Obama’s executive orders by pointing out that President Bush had issued far more, she missed the point entirely by ignoring the scope and import of Obama’s orders.  When the president refuses to enforce laws he doesn’t like, re-writes legislation that he had already signed into law, and threatens to by-pass Congress to advance his agenda, he crosses constitutional lines.  That, Ms. Theodore, is indefensible.
          Is it any wonder that America’s trust in government is at an all-time low?  Ronald Reagan had it right when he said, “Government is not a solution to our problem, government IS the problem.”