The Federal Government’s Vegetative Universe

Fox Business reports on Wayne Crews' study on the hard-to-detect regulations created by federal agencies, without Congress' approval, and their economic costs.

The rules hit all levels of American life, health care, retirement, the workplace, education, and the Internet, says Clyde Crews, Jr., a top researcher and respected author with the libertarian-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute, in his new report, “Mapping Washington’s Lawlessness 2016.”

According to Crews’ estimation of the “regulatory dark matter,” the federal government has published 524,251 “public notices” describing federal rules that affect the economy in the Federal Register since 1994. Federal agencies issued 3,554 rules and regulations in 2014, versus the 224 bills Congress passed and the president signed into law last year. “The average has been 26 rules for every law over the past decade,” Crews says.

The consequence of the vegetative universe is complete lack of accountability to the American taxpayer. Crews says the federal government now gets away with issuing misleading unemployment and GDP statistics, often “to justify increased government spending.”

On top of that, the White House has refused to enforce laws passed by Congress, Crews notes.

That includes “the July 2013 Treasury Department’s unilateral delay, first by blog post, then by IRS guidance, of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) employer mandate and its accompanying tax penalty for non-compliance,” Crews says. “Then came the November 2013 declaration—first by the president during a news conference and subsequently in Department of Health and Human Services guidance material—that insurers could continue to sell non-ACA compliant health policies.”

Read the full article at Fox Business.