At the Marco Rubio campaign event at the Cheshire Historical Society in Keene today, there was standing room only for attendees to hear the Senator’s campaign pitch. He began his speech with mild disapproval of the Republican establishment being the party of, “change around the margins”, meaning that for the Republicans currently in power, big changes were not really the goal; only small tweaks to the status quo were on order. I liked where he was going with that sentiment—that, as President, he would bring actual change to Washington instead of just small corrections. We need that.
He moved along in his speech admirably, talking about some interesting ideas on vocational education, our current immigration problems, and his plan to lower the income tax burden on Americans. Where he really got my attention was the portion of the talk in which he lamented the latest federal government move to increase the regulatory burden (read: taxes) on U.S. businesses to the tune of $2 BILLION dollars.
Here’s where I really dialed in, with the Senator’s solution to the problem: he proposed what he is calling a “Regulatory Budget”, wherein federal agencies would only be able to level new taxes up to a certain (as yet undetermined) amount; in the event that this amount would be exceeded by a new tax, that tax burden would have to be reduced somewhere else to offset it. Essentially, it is a cap on the regulatory burden imposed by the federal government on businesses. Anything that hinders the overreach of the federal government is interesting to me, yet I couldn’t help thinking about Senator Rubio’s initial “change around the margins” statement.
I was lucky enough at the end of the speech to ask the Senator why we are not considering a way to limit the practice of our federal agencies from creating laws administratively, rather than just capping the regulatory burden that the federal government levies on businesses. I said that our government was set up for the U.S. Congress to write its laws; it was never intended for some nameless, faceless, unaccountable bureaucrat in Washington to create regulations.
Senator Rubio only responded by stating that Obamacare is an example of how the U.S. Congress has relegated its rulemaking authority for healthcare issues to the Department of Health and Human Services, within the wording of the law itself. Further noting that this is not the way things should normally progress, he moved on to another question. He dodged. (In his defense, there were many people with questions.)
Now, in my mind, this is the crux of the problem: if we elect our legislators to represent us via their legislative authority, yet they delegate their authority for law making to an unaccountable agency, they are essentially undermining our entire system of a representative republic.
Readers, I ask you, isn’t installing a “cap” on regulatory burdens placed on U.S. businesses by bureaucrats that are clearly not accountable–to anyone–just another “change around the margin”?