George Leef’s latest Forbes column features an open letter to politicians interested in helping improve their constituents’ lives.
Look folks, I know that when you say you want to do what’s in the public interest, you mostly mean doing whatever helps you stay in office and calling it “the public interest.” Some of you, however, might actually want to do things that benefit the great mass of the people. This missive is directed to you.
For more than a century, political debate in the country has revolved around enacting new laws: the federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, the Community Reinvestment Act, Sarbanes-Oxley, the Affordable Care Act, and countless others. The momentum has been with government expansion and it has been almost incessant. Proponents promised great results from new laws, with opponents mostly putting up a weak defense before compromising or being steamrolled.
That is what needs to change. We’ve got to throw the ratchet of government expansion into reverse.
Instead of talking about new laws to enact and regulations to impose, it’s time to start talking about old ones that should be repealed. Your predecessors in office – and quite possibly you – have done grave damage to America with swarms of laws and regulations that take liberty and property away from the people, waste resources, enrich and empower special interest groups, and undermine the rule of law.
The very best, most public-spirited thing you could do would be to repeal them.
Leef goes on to recommend some good starting points for the campaign to repeal bad laws.
