New year, new record? Fed lists 141 new regulations in 3 days.
Written by Allen West on January 6, 2014
The federal government is still on a New Year’s overreach binge. According to the Daily Caller,
The website Regulations.gov lists 141 regulations that have been posted by federal agencies in the last three days alone. Of these regulations, 119 are “rulemaking,” meaning they establish a new rule. Twenty-three are “non-rulemaking,” meaning the regulation does not establish a new rule. The largest group of regulations have to do with energy and environmental issues, many of them issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. One new EPA regulation is an amendment to a rule on hazardous emissions from lead smelters.
We’ve already discussed the second and third order effects on the lead industry. Other regulations crack down on coal-powered electricity plants, effectively preventing them from being built.
“If these regulations go into effect, American jobs will be lost, electricity prices will soar, and economic uncertainty will grow. We need the federal government to work as a partner, not an adversary, and to invest in America’s energy future,” said West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
Senator Manchin is spot on in his assessment, but as a sensible conservative Democrat, his pleas fall on the deaf ears of the progressive socialists of the Obama administration.
Another example of the intrusive nature of these new regulations from the Energy Department establishes “test procedures for residential furnace fans.” We already reported on the government mandating the type of light bulbs for our homes.
The Department of Energy also recently announced an agreement with cable and satellite pay television providers on non-regulatory energy efficiency standards to improve the energy efficiency of set-top boxes by 10-45 percent.
But herein lies the problem. Americans have no idea what rules are being made that affect their lives. We have departed from being a nation of laws passed through a system of representative democracy to being a bureaucratic regulatory state.
The system of checks and balances is being replaced by executive and regulatory fiat — on steroids. There is no concern for the economic impact on the American citizen, only some progressive ideological agenda. This is a dangerous situation for our country because we’re on the path of rule by edict, not rule of law.
How can the average American know what these 141 new regulations will mean for their lives? How can we know the impact these regulations will have? The unelected bureaucrats do not represent the people and therefore are not responsible to the people.
The elected representatives in the House and Senate are supposed to conduct oversight, but how is that possible when regulations are enacted during a time when these legislative bodies are not even in session?
We don’t just need tax and monetary reform, we also need regulatory reform that promotes our economic growth, not retards it. How many of these regulations will affect our small business owners? Well, I guess we’ll just have to dial up regulations.gov in order to find out what the Obama administration is up to. And to think this was supposed to be “the most transparent administration in the history of America.” Yeah, right
Read more at
http://allenbwest.com/2014/01/new-year-new-record-fed-lists-141-new-regulations-3-days/#KfYktlVd66rKx8jA.99
