Federal Laws

I wonder if anyone really thinks about the never ending list of federal laws, rules and regulations that flow out of Washington year after year?(1)

Now obviously, to have a civilized society we need some laws to set a level playing field for all the citizens. But you would kind of think that at some point, say after a couple of hundred years, you would have all the laws you needed to structure a free and functioning democracy. My concern is that, in most cases, every new law, regulation or rule decrease our freedoms. Take for instance the new health insurance laws, over 1000 pages of new rules that did not exist before passage of this law.

Before this law, you had the right to decide if you wanted to spend your money on health insurance. You no longer have that right. Before this law, you had the right to decide exactly what options were included with the health insurance you bought. You no longer have that right. Before this law, you had the right to decide if you wanted to have your insurance cover your adult children. You no longer have that right. And the list goes on and on. A 17-year-old college student used to have the right to a credit card without a co signer, no longer. A long time ago you had the right to decide for yourself if you wanted auto insurance, no longer. No longer can you decide if you want to wear a seatbelt, or own a establishment that allows smoking.

I am not saying that some of the rules don’t have a positive effect. What I am saying is we are a lot less free than we were 20, 30 or 100 years ago. And our freedoms continue to be infringed upon with every new addition to federal law. It’s a little scary when I think about where it all will end.

So, I started to think about what we really should consider when we are deciding, as citizens to support or oppose any new federal law and I came up with three basic areas that we should consider when considering some new law.

1. Is it constitutional? No matter how much good we think a law will do, no matter how much we want a particular regulation to be enacted, it must adhere to the constitution.

The founding fathers were very familiar with the problems of an un-checked government. Heck, they had a king appointed by God. One can’t really disagree with his decisions. So they set out to write a constitution that protected our basic human rights, as laid out in the Declaration of Independence, and limited the power of the federal government to a very basic area of control. They stated very clearly that any powers not granted to the Federal government in the constitution are reserved for the states. Now, the first few laws passed were pretty easy to understand. We needed a law against murder because to murder someone deprived them of their basic human right to life. Same thing with stealing, an infringement on you right to liberty. Things get a little cloudier with laws that seize you income so the government can distribute it to someone else. This type of law now gets the government picking the winners and losers on our system Government give a tax break to people buying hybrid cars, winner, people who buy hybrid cars, losers everyone who paid taxes so it could be given to hybrid car owners. Think about this, this is not the government collecting taxes to support the government, this is the government seizing your property (income) just so the government can distribute it to people the government has decided are more deserving of the fruits of your labor than you are. Thinking of it another way lets say you have 3 TV sets and your neighbor has only one, the government decides that’s not fair, comes to your house, takes one of your TV’s and hands it to your neighbor. No matter how well meaning these wealth redistribution type laws are it is pretty hard to find the power granted in the constitution to allow your property to be seized and distributed as our elected officials see fit.

2. What are the intended consequences? Will the new law or regulation really accomplish our intent? The new health care bill is expected to improve health care. Yet, in the over 2000 pages, there is almost nothing about health care, only health insurance. Is the only problem with our health care caused and related to our health insurance? Does limiting you options for health insurance and benefits really improve your chances for good health? Will the trillions of new tax dollars spent really improve most people’s health?

3. What are the unintended consequences? In 1963, the government started mandating seat belts in new cars. No longer did you have the right to decide if you wanted this feature, the government mandated it. As the years went on this mandate expanded from just the front seat to all seats, then to mandatory seat belt use (enforced by the federal government withholding federal tax money to states that did not enact mandatory seat belt laws). So, the government collected taxes from all states, then used that collected money as a bribe to get states to do as the federal government wants but really did not have the power under the constitution to enforce. Then the government, seeing that people still were not behaving like the federal government wanted, enacted laws to make air bags mandatory. “Sorry you don’t get a choice, the people in Washington know what is good for you.” And then we find out that the new federal mandated safety device forced on us actually kills people, from 1993-1996 alone 32 people died from air bag related injuries including 21 children (2). So then we get more laws and now it is not legal to put your child in the front seat of your car. We actually have safety warnings in new cars (another new law) telling you to be careful because your federally mandated safety device could kill you. Now that is what I call an unintended consequence.

We are slowly trading our liberty for the security of mommy government, protecting us from the challenges of life. We are slowly trading away our personal freedom, the one real thing that makes this country great and unique.

(1) How Many Federal Regulations are There?
According to the Office of the Federal Register, in 1998, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), the official listing of all regulations in effect, contained a total of 134,723 pages in 201 volumes that claimed 19 feet of shelf space. In 1970, the CFR totaled only 54,834 pages.

(2) The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that since 1990, airbag deployment has killed 227 people in low-severity crashes, including 76 drivers, 10 adult passengers, 119 children between the ages of 1 and 11, and 22 infants. Of the 76 adult drivers killed, 28 were women under 5 feet 2 inches tall, and 4 of the 10 adult passengers killed were females smaller than that height