This blog in response to the article by George Will in the Washington Post: On Day One, Trump should find these two measures on his desk. 16 November 2016
I don’t often agree with George Will anymore and only partly do in this opinion. First, his pipeline argument is just simplistic and does not consider the desperation of our society to keep the myth of endless cheap oil where we will go to the point of destroying our land and water supplies to keep the myth, like Alberta is doing with oil sands, and go to endless wars, like the US is doing.
Second, and where I mostly agree with him, is that congress, now more than ever, needs to take back its constitutional power. We have now elected a nut case to the Presidency. Unpredictable at best. Congress has been neglecting its responsibility to make laws. This has been a long process, as was discussed last week in a New York Times op ed, ( dating back to the 1960’s and is built into the design of the system) but has been the outspoken goal of Republicans during the Obama Presidency in order to be able to blame him for nothing being done and to also blame him for doing things by Presidential directive rather than through congress.
Where I disagree with George Will is in his argument about regulations made by bureaucrats. I agree there are too many regulations, just try to go to your local planning department for a permit, or ask more than one border guard what is allowed across, and you will see this. But having congress, in laws, be the only regulatory body is too restrictive to be functional. Congress makes laws that are by necessity a bit vague because, One, they need to pass both houses and get signed by the President, three groups of people, by design, who have different and often conflicting interests. Two, laws with all the regulations built into them would be so complicated as to be un-passable. Three, laws like he suggests would be impossible to change in a timely fashion as circumstances, needs, and society changes.
We should absolutely streamline the regulations added to clarify the laws. We would do well to to have these regulations added at the state level instead of the federal level as de Tocqueville argued in 1835. Congress needs to pull its weight and do the best for the country and stop focusing on their donors and re-election.
Hark 