Jonathan Bronitsky writes for the Federalist about an important task for the next Republican president.
As conservatives, if we’re serious about re-constitutionalizing our system of government, the next administration must make slashing both the scope and scale of the executive branch — the citadel of the administrative state — its highest priority. If we fail in that objective, any and all wins we secure the next time we win at the ballot box will be erased by the next Democrat administration. It will happen immediately and by executive order and other means, as it did virtually on the first day of the Biden administration.
Out of concern for second- and third-order consequences, I’m typically wary to recommend “silver bullets” when it comes to policies for addressing national issues. But I believe that chopping down the administrative state is as close to a swift and enduring fix as we’ll have for righting the ship of state.
Most Americans believe that legislation passed by Congress is what has screwed up our daily lives, from education to health care to the exorbitant price of gasoline to the outrageous cost of groceries. That’s not surprising, because we’re taught in middle school and high school that the legislative branch makes the “laws” that govern the nation. Yet it’s even less surprising when you consider that public education is a government-run indoctrination cartel — one designed to mask the reality of American government in the 21st century.
The reality is that laws don’t rule our lives. Rules and regulations do, and they are practically devised out of whole cloth, implemented, and enforced by unelected bureaucrats in virtually countless departments and agencies within the executive branch. (I say countless because there’s no consensus as to the number of entities, but most estimate in the hundreds.) My wife and I served in the Trump administration. For almost two years, we witnessed with our own eyes the bureaucrats brazenly acting as a fourth branch of government, and an essentially unaccountable one at that.
