Congress Must Mobilize To Halt Biden’s Radical Administrative State Transformation

Photo Credit: Getty

[T]he genius of the Progressives in the late 19th century was to preempt or push large sectors of the emerging future (the environment, schools, electromagnetic spectrum, infrastructure, welfare, the medical world) into the political world.”

—Fred L. Smith Jr.

Alongside deleting the entire Trump-era deregulatory campaign (anybody remember “one-in, two-out”?), Joe Biden’s first day in office brought forth a memorandum called “Modernizing Regulatory Review.”

In it, Biden called for the Office of Management and Budget to “consider ways that OIRA [the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs] can play a more proactive role in partnering with agencies to explore, promote, and undertake regulatory initiatives that are likely to yield significant benefits.”

The new approach entails “partnering” with agencies, not strictly supervising, questioning and disciplining them and their regulatory offal, as had been the ostensible function of OIRA since the early 1980s.

Now, over two years into Biden’s term, we find that misbegotten kickoff memorandum formalized with a new April 6 Executive Order 14,094 of the same name, making regulators less accountable than ever.

In any assessment of Biden’s proclamations on regulatory reform or regulatory review — as his barnstorming on the inflation and infrastucture laws demonstrate — one cannot simply accept at face value that he means what people normally mean by critical analysis and oversight of today’s regulatory enterprise.

Rather, one is forced first and foremost see Biden’s ambitions here in the context of his self-announced “whole-of-government” (WOG) pursuits that splay themselves unwelcomed and unbidden across much of American life and, if unopposed, will render limited government impossible. Biden’s ambitions include a damaging “competition policy” that encourages heighted federal meddling in private business and economic affairs, major interventions in the name of “climate crisis,” and most prominently now, trendy, cultish and divisive “equity,” ESG and DEI pursuits coordinated with suspect legality across agencies throughout the entire federal government. (Note: for a detailed discussion of this fishy WOG agenda its implications for the expansion of government and the loss of liberty and constitutional normalcy, see the recent edition of Ten Thousand Commandments).

Read the full article on Forbes.