Regulation rollback is not enough, says free-market analyst

Though some federal regulations are being rolled back by the Trump administration, a leading free-market policy analyst and advocate in Washington says we aren’t doing enough to put the power of actual lawmaking back in the hands of Congress.

“What Congress has gotten in the habit of doing is passing broad, vague laws, claiming credit for their good intentions and then, when the actual details and specifics are written, they say, oh no, that’s not what I wanted, blame the bureaucrats, blame the regulators,” said Phil Kerpen, leader of American Commitment. “To a certain extent, you can sort of dial things back when you have a Republican administration. You’ve got, sort of, more conservative people at these agencies, they can sort of reconsider some of these regulations one by one.”

Putting so much power in the hands of regulators gives too much power to the President.

“We’ve got to demand that they start writing laws with a high degree of specificity and understanding the issues and developing expertise institutionally in Congress again,” said Kerpen. “Really taking seriously the very first thing in the Constitution after the famous We the People preamble, which is Article I, Section I, it says all legislative power is vested in the Congress.”

Congress has a duty to pay attention to what it passes and not leave the implementation of everything to an alphabet soup of agencies that may or may not have the people’s best interests at heart.