MARINA DEL REY, CALIF.--Among his last acts in office, President Clinton has authorized thousands of new executive orders and regulations curbing our freedoms. This should come as no surprise, and fits the character of a President whose personal motto seems to be "I can get away with it," said Robert W. Tracinski, an Ayn Rand Institute Fellow and columnist for Creators Syndicate.
"These 'midnight regulations' are an example of Clinton's use of unchecked, unprincipled power," said Tracinski. "Technically, these regulations and executive decrees are not 'laws'--but they might as well be. Over the past century, Congress has granted so much power to the regulatory agencies that the executive branch, not Congress, now writes the majority of the new federal rules, averaging about 70,000 pages of regulations per year. In a last-minute orgy spanning the past three months, Clinton's administration has issued about 29,000 pages of new regulations."
Tracinski noted that the new regulations include an executive order banning new logging contracts and road-building on 60 million acres of federal land, which will remove this land from any kind of human use or development; the lifting of an order barring former Clinton administration employees from working for lobbyists for five years; and a new Energy Department regulation requiring that washing machines meet new, stringent energy-efficient requirements, at a cost of $240 per machine.
"But this is just the tip of the iceberg," said Tracinski. "This flood of new laws is so large and complex that no one can know all it contains. Since no one--not the public, not the press, not Congress, not even President Clinton himself--can actually examine all of the regulations, the result is that anything goes. The bureaucrats who write these regulations can dispose of our lives and property however they wish.
"Fortunately, there is a simple way to reverse this assault on our freedom. President Bush, in his first day in office, should countermand all executive orders and suspend all federal regulations issued since the election. He should do it because the public has a right to make sure that new laws are discussed, debated, and voted on by our chosen representatives--a right utterly denied by a flood of midnight regulations."
Ayn Rand Institute Fellow and Creators Syndicate columnist Robert W. Tracinski is available for interviews.
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