By The Bureaucrats For The Bureaucrats

With a Republican House emboldened by their greatest electoral success in 50 years, it seemed like Obama's agenda had been dealt a major blow.  Any further intrusions into the health care sector would be blocked with the support of the American people.  Cap and trade legislation instituting a carbon tax would be looked upon as raising taxes in the midst of an already anemic recovery.  Card check, designed to increase the unionization of the workplace, seemed DOA.  Net neutrality, a government intrusion into Internet pricing, seemed doomed to wander in the wilderness as yet another government solution in desperate search of a problem. 

Quietly, however, all these agenda items have been unilaterally imposed on the American people through the HHS, EPA, NLRB, and the FCC.  What could not be passed in the Congress has been mandated as law by the bureaucracy.  Many of these new rules will be challenged in court and, as Reason reports, the HHS has already backed down from funding end-of-life counseling, a measure that was removed from the original Obamacare bill.  The EPA's new carbon tax has already survived at least one judicial challenge.  Verizon is filing suit against the FCC.  South Carolina is moving to block card check. 

The fact that all of these measures can be imposed by the executive branch and only checked by the judicial branch is a massive failure of government and an indictment of Congress's desire to delegate its own constitutionally mandated powers to other bodies.  Congress has repeatedly ducked responsibility from everything from instituting unpopular policies to declarations of war.  The Constitution states that only Congress can declare war but it has not used its power since World War II.  Resolutions on the authorization of force have been used in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq.  When there is no possibility that Congress can be held responsible for their actions, the nation too often entangles itself in foreign wars.

Although all spending bills must originate in the House, bureaucracies always seem to have the funds that they need to enforce whatever regulations they decide is best for the American people.  This not democracy, this is tyranny.  Congress needs to immediately reassert its constitutional mandate and reign in the power of the entrenched bureaucracies whose mission can vastly change from administration to administration.  Congress is the check that keeps the President from having the power of king.  The deliberative process of the legislative branch is the bulwark that protects us from passing bad laws.  When that process can be skipped because it is inconvenient for the party that controls the White House, we become less free. 

Unfortunately, dismantling the bureaucracy seems an impossible task.  Although Reagan ran on eliminating the Board of Education and the Department of Energy (a new bureaucracy created by his predecessor, Carter) he never even came close.  As these bureaucracies persist, the ability to get rid of them diminishes.  A good first step would be to legislate against the latest overreaches of these entities and eventually craft legislation to limit their power going forward.  Unfortunately, Congress seems more than content to leave the heavy lifting, and our liberty, to unelected bureaucrats.