Daggers Drawn: Conservatives Plot Ways to Throttle Agency Power
- Submitted by: Love Knowledge
- Category: Politics
The post Daggers Drawn: Conservatives Plot Ways to Throttle Agency Power appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.
Last Thursday, towards the end of The Time for Regulatory Reform in Congress, a four-hour conference on Capitol Hill, Chuck Gordon, a retired federal lawyer, raised his hand to ask a question.
“Agencies have made the air cleaner,’” and ensured that “workers are protected from asbestos,” he said. “Why do people here hate agencies?”
Gordon’s query was understandable. Most panelists expressed a distaste for agencies that was palpable. The conference was co-sponsored by the administrative law section of the American Bar Association, but the driving force behind the event appeared to be its partner, the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, a program of the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. “It is fitting that an institution bearing the name of Antonin Scalia would sponsor this event,” keynote speaker Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) told conferees.
Lee railed against “executive branch bureaucrats who work in Soviet-style structures,” who go unnoticed by the public. But agencies’ “reputation for irrelevance” has never been deserved, he added, charging that the “administrative state is revolting” against the Trump White House.
Lee accused national intelligence leakers of using their power to “go after” Michael Flynn, who resigned as national security adviser after media accounts of his meetings with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office. While not commenting on the merits of Flynn’s actions, Lee said he found the leakers’ actions reprehensible “behavior for a banana republic.”
Another sign of agency resistance, he said, was the effort of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staffers and their union to “pressure” the Senate to reject Scott Pruitt as EPA head.
Agencies, Lee insisted, “are operating almost as a fourth branch” of government, ignoring the US Constitution’s delegation of “all legislative powers” to Congress.
Lee’s speech confirmed the event’s main message: Congress had given away far too much power to federal agencies, and it was time to roll that power back. Panelists suggested a number of legislative and policy options to do just that.
Utah Senator Mike Lee thinks agencies have too much power.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Todd Gaziano, the executive director of the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, proposed that the Trump White House work with Congress to nullify regulations and policy positions that go far back in time. He said that the current law, the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which he helped draft as a congressional staffer, could be a far more powerful cudgel.
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