Restoring Our Republic from the Rise of Red Tape
Red tape in America is rising. Exponentially.
It’s suffocating our Constitution and our freedoms.
This is confirmed in a report recently released by the Heritage Foundation. The report states that since President Obama took office six years ago, his Administration has issued 184 major rules costing the American people well over $80 billion annually – more than twice as many rules as the Bush Administration created in its first six years.
The report goes on to indicates that the cost of these rules is really much higher as “the actual cost of this massive expansion of the administrative state is obscured by the large number of rules for which costs have not been fully quantified.”
According to CNS News’ coverage of the report, rules are most commonly considered “major” if they have an expected economic impact of over $100 million per year.
CNS News went on to highlight these key quotes from the Heritage Foundation report and Sen. James Lankford’s statements supporting the report:
“Many more regulations are on the way, with another 126 economically significant rules on the Administration’s agenda, such as directives to farmers for growing and harvesting fruits and vegetables; strict limits on credit access for service members; and, yet another redesign of light bulbs.”
“In many respects, the need for reform of the regulatory system has never been greater. The White House, Congress, and federal agencies routinely ignore regulatory costs, exaggerate benefits, and breach legislative and constitutional boundaries. They also increasingly dictate lifestyle choices rather than focusing on public health and safety.” . . .
“This is not just a Democrat, Republican issue. This is a bureaucracy issue,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) at the Heritage Foundation event to release the report on Tuesday. “And it’s been a growing problem for a long time and continues to accelerate. I remind people often that the regulatory scheme is ground zero of the fight that we’ll have with government for the coming days.
At the ACLJ, we have seen first hand how the out-of-control, unelected, and unaccountable bureaucracy wreaks havoc on our Founders’ vision for a government protecting our fundamental freedoms.
We have seen bureaucrats target churches and ministries, adoptive families, state governments, pro-life speech, and much more.
In my new book, Undemocratic, I discuss in-depth the bureaucratic overreach of the Obama Administration and present real solutions to this ever growing problem.
Having served inside our government and later arguing before the Supreme Court a dozen times, I have seen government from the inside and have challenged it from the outside.
In my book, I not only talk about the problems but also provide a detailed solution involving the 3 Rs:
“The stakes are high, the bias is obvious, and the drift away from democracy is real, but there is hope. […]
First, resist.
Americans cannot consent to unlawful overreach. We must challenge federal lawlessness in courts of law and in the court of public opinion. And when you challenge, you can win. In this book I will describe how even the most unaccountable bureaucracies can back down in the face of public outcry, and I’ll describe court victories against seemingly overwhelming odds.
Sometimes, you can tell the government, “No.”
Next, reform.
Court battles and public resistance won’t be enough to reform the system, to prevent abuse before it escalates to a court battle or public petition. Congress must reform our civil service to introduce real accountability, limit agencies’ rulemaking authority, and strip public officials of their effective immunity from liability when they violate citizens’ constitutional rights. Public officials will think twice before engaging in partisan witch hunts if they have to write personal checks for violating your First Amendment rights.
Finally, restore.
We must engage in a long-term effort to teach Americans the virtues of constitutional democracy. We are not a great nation because we always make the correct policy choices (indeed, we make many mistakes) but because a great people live under a great system of government. The “by any means necessary” system of the bureaucratic Left is ripping America from its foundations and transforming us into something different, something far more European than American.” . . .
In his legendary Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln famously declared our nation had a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Yet a government divorced from electoral accountability is no longer “of the people” or “by the people.” And a bureaucratic government that is dedicated not to serving impartially and fairly but to ruthlessly advancing a single ideology can no longer be “for the people.”
Learn more about how to resist illegal abuse, reform our broken system, and restore our Republic by ordering your copy of “Undemocratic” today or picking it up wherever books are sold.
Inform yourself to transform our nation.
Order your copy today to help us get our plan to restore our Republic on The New York Times Best Sellers List before Saturday night’s deadline. Change the national debate.
