Most Americans have no idea how regulated we are – by the Federal government and States. Regulations constrain the freedom of individuals and markets. While some are necessary for public safety, many are the product of over-caffeinated bureaucrats. Time is now to cut.
Not one of our Founders, nor those who fought in World Wars I or II, would believe how hamstrung individuals and small businesses have become. The regulations are countless.
Where to begin? First, we have more than 2000 federal departments, agencies, and bureaus with regulatory power given by Congress. They have “delegated power.” That power has grown exponentially – that is, gone straight up – in recent decades.
To illustrate the point, the “Bible of federal regulations” is the “Code of Federal Regulations.” The volume would fill a house, ten houses, and land in a radius of a mile from your house. It is enormous, and digitized, and no living person knows it all.
It is composed of 50 “titles,” themselves enormous, giant stacks of rules with names like “General Provisions,” “Grants and Agreements,” “Accounts,” “Administrative Personnel,” “Domestic Security,” “Agriculture,” “Aliens,” “Energy,” “Banking,” “Commerce and Foreign Trade,” “Commercial Practices,” “Food and Drugs,” “Foreign Relations,” “Housing,” “Labor,” “National Defense,” “Education,” and on and on.
While the US Supreme Court and constitutionally focused lower courts have begun limiting the reach of unelected bureaucrats and their power to regulate us—bureaucrats hate being regulated themselves—the effort to reign in excessive, unauthorized mandates is slow.
Last year, the US Supreme Court struck down a 1984 case – Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council or the “Chevron Doctrine” – which had given federal agencies wide power.
While this sounds unimportant, it was a sign of what needs to occur. Since 1984, agency power has been, in effect, widened to the point of abuse. More than 18,000 cases have been brought to contain agency power. In Relentless v. Department of Commerce, the High Court said, “enough.”
No one needs to remember cases, but the idea, the principle, is important. Federal agencies – like agencies in States controlled by Democrat governors and legislatures – have overstepped, overregulated, and often abused their power.
Excessive limits on individual and business rights – what we always had – have been imposed. If COVID highlighted the point, a spike in the accelerating encroachment of government on liberty
If you doubt this notion, just look at the numbers. At the direction of Democrat-controlled congresses and presidents – and also some Republican ones – the number of regulations pushed has exploded. Today, roughly 4,500 federal regulations are pushed each year and made into law.
This number continues to rise, behind it is a mountain of paperwork “justifying” the new rulemaking, restrictions on life from birth to death, sunup to sundown, rural and urban.
President Biden’s bureaucracy alone pushed an unprecedented number of new regulations, even after COVID. Thus, one recent study shows – in a single month, April 2024 – the Biden crowd, pressed “an unprecedented number of significant final rules.”
Wrote the George Washington University study, “The number of economically significant rules in April [2024] surpasses that of any single month recorded in our data set, which dates back to the Reagan Administration.” In short, the federal bureaucracy has gone wild regulating.
So, what is to be done? Objectively, more constitutionally focused judges on the federal bench will reduce regulation, especially after the Chevron Doctrine was sidelined in 2024. But more is needed. Every power the federal – or state – government takes to itself, comes from us.
What President Trump may be able to do, utilizing his Article II powers and the tailwind of our Founders and history, is to actively review all these federal regulations, and begin trimming.
The process of reviewing that mountain of regulations is sure to be long, but President Trump has made clear, that he is on the mission and wants to elevate individual liberty and contract bureaucracy.
This is one big way to do that, review and begin revising, cutting, and eliminating the enormous – often crushing – weight of federal regulations on average citizens and small businesses. After that, the baton will pass to us, the citizens, who need to end one-party Democrat rule in states.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).
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