Obama Sets Record, Bringing The Federal Register To 81,611 pages In 2015


Obama Issues Mandates to Circumvent Elected Officials

The Obama administration added 81,611 pages to the Federal Register in 2015, the highest total ever for added rules and regulations. This is the third time that his administration has crossed the 80,000 page threshold, which is to say that Obama much prefers mandating and implementing his own legislation to working with Congress to pass laws that are vetted by the people’s representatives rather than passed down from a royal presidency or its minions.

Most recent administrations have kept presidential rule making to under 70,000 pages, and Ronald Reagan, who was especially wary of an overbearing federal government, kept the average to under 50,000 per year. But this president, utilizing his own declarations through the “pen and the phone” as he once said, and the un-elected and the often out of control cabinets such as the EPA, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Justice Department, have battered and abused the system to ram regulations into place that have the same effect as law without bothering to check with Congress.

Most of the attention in Washington is focused on Congress and lawmaking, but academics and legal scholars are increasingly debating the role of federal agencies and whether the executive branch should have such a concentration of power.

With thousands of rules issued a year, compared with only several hundred bills from Congress, the amount of action coming from the executive branch is hard to track.

Congress, with Republicans now in control of both chambers, has tried to push back. The massive spending bill Congress cleared this month included provisions preventing the IRS and the Securities and Exchange Commission from releasing new political campaign finance rules.

The House next week will vote on a bill requiring agencies to post short online summaries of complex rules and to submit monthly reports to the OMB about rules they expect to finalize.

But lawmakers have had less luck overturning rules that Mr. Obama already has released.

Just before adjourning this year, Congress passed resolutions disapproving of two EPA rules designed to force states and power plants to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But Mr. Obama vetoed both of those resolutions, and Congress is unlikely to be successful in overriding him, meaning his plans will remain in effect.

Earlier in the year, Congress passed a measure to overturn rules from the National Labor Relations Board that employers said would allow labor unions to force “ambush” elections. Mr. Obama vetoed the bill, and Congress failed to override the veto.

The Government Accountability Office, which is Congress‘ chief watchdog, said in a 2012 report that when it came to major rules — those with far-reaching economic impact — the government short-circuited the process nearly 70 percent of the time.

It is clear that Obama would prefer to have absolute power and is only interested in “uniting” the country when all parties do exactly as he says. The power of the president was never meant to be imperial, but came with clear limitations. The power of agencies and federal offices is also blatently out of control, and Obama has abused the power of the presidency beyond anything heretofore known. It remains to be seen if the next president will continue on this track and follow this unconstitutional precedent, or whether the Congress will find a way to bring presidential power back to reasonable bounds. Clearly the founding fathers never intended the chief executive to have this much power, but Obama has shown he is only interested in playing the game called “my way or the highway.” And he has consistently shown the highway to the American people.

Source: m.washingtontimes.com

 



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