Federal Overreach
“Government Gone Wild”
The United States government operates under the confines of the U.S. Constitution, given only those powers expressly granted to it in this document. In many aspects of American life, however, government is acting outside those enumerated powers and has encroached upon our freedoms without checks or court reviews. A truly limited government helps its citizens by only exercising its particular and spelled out tasks and removes itself from interfering in decisions or jobs done best by private citizens or the business community.
This situation is especially evidenced in the administrative agencies of the Executive branch. These agencies now have independent authority to disseminate rules, enforce those rules, and then to adjudicate enforcement of the rules. No check on the power of these independent agencies exists. The SGLF believes that there need to be limits to the powers of these agencies and their overreach into individual states.
FEMA
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) plays a large role in the increased federalization process. FEMA was originally created as national catastrophe response agency, not a federal program which subsidizes Americans who live in risky disaster areas. President Obama has made 343 declarations since taking office in January 2010, the most in FEMA history. Instead of creating another federal agency to handle natural disasters, Congress could establish requirements related to which circumstances can be declared natural disasters. A key way to accomplish this would be to align these declarations with measurement scales used for natural disasters. The costs associated with natural disasters in terms of lives, homes and possessions and economic costs are horrible. However, adding more and more responsibilities and obligations to the FEMA and federal government’s plate will only result in a losing situation for taxpayers.
Federal Estate
The federal government’s acquisition of and control over land in the United States is getting out of control. According to the Department of the Interior, payment in lieu of taxes for taking land off local tax rolls under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was $358.5 million. In 2004, the Government Services Administration reported that the federal government owned some 5,104,608 acres of “vacant” land, while in 2003, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported that the National Park Service has deferred maintenance by billions of dollars on its land. In 2007, the GAO reported that the Interior Department spent $1.6 billion annually on maintenance and construction, but had a $9.6 billion backlog of deferred maintenance projects. Nevada itself is already 84.48% owned by the federal government, not including any foreclosed housing that the government now owns as well.
Not only does federal possession of land add to the federal deficit through maintenance and up keep costs, but it also prevents job creating activities from occurring on that land. The farming, mining, and forestry industries could all create jobs on these parcels of land that are being used for nothing and taxpayers are taking the hit for it.
EPA
Measures designed to protect the health and welfare of the environment and society are very necessary. These policies, like others that regulate businesses and citizens of the United States, should be created and enforced through their proper channels, not independently created, regulated, and enforced by one single entity. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) blatant overreach has been denounced by members of both parties. The EPA’s lack of discretion in promulgating rules has and will continue to effect jobs and energy costs. In addition to this lack of discretion, the EPA’s overregulation also weighs heavily on businesses across all fifty states. Billions of dollars yearly for compliance with the EPA’s heavy-handed measures may force businesses to leave the United States, or not choose to locate here in the first place. The EPA’s independent authority to create and then consequently unilaterally enforce these rules must be stopped.
Dodd-Frank Act
The financial regulatory overhaul Dodd-Frank Act (DFA) decreases competition amongst financial institutions in the United States, while simultaneously treating large firms different than small ones. In treating these two types of firms different, small firms have less chance of success, and the large firms that have been deemed “too big to fail” are at a competitive advantage compared to their smaller counterparts. The DFA’s central notion that the Federal Reserve Bank will control the activities of these firms also perpetuates this unfair advantage. Decisions of competitiveness and who prevails in the free market system should be left to the system. The DFA intrudes into the marketplace and does not provide protection to other institutions that exist. This gross interference in the free enterprise system needs to be repealed or fixed immediately.
The Dodd-Frank Act:
- Intrudes into matters left to the states or businesses themselves
- Intrudes into the judicial branch’s responsibilities
- Distorts residential mortgage markets
News & Articles
Regulation for Dummies
Jan Eberly, an Assistant Treasury Secretary, kicked off the Administration campaign with a white paper in October that purported to debunk the "misconceptions" that "uncertainty is holding back business investment and hiring and that the overall burden of existing regulations is so high that firms have reduced their hiring." Then the Administration mobilized some of the worst offenders, such as Kathleen Sebelius of HHS ("There has been no explosion of new rules") and Lisa Jackson of the EPA (her opponents are "using the economy as cover").
A Leviathan of Land: Perspective on the Size of the US Gov’t In Pictures
With the takeover of health care and frenzied government growth front and center, many are wondering when we will – if we haven’t already – reached a tipping point that fundamentally alters America. Much of what’s been done is described as a temporary fix. However, as President Reagan noted, “There is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.”
The Reid Energy Bill: Another Government Land Grab
The all-too-familiar idea “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” has reared its head in Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D–NV) Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act of 2010. In addition to proposing hurdles high enough to trip efforts to develop energy resources in the Gulf of Mexico, the proposal would gift to the greens one of their long sought desires: a full pot of money in the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LCWF). It would be a big pot of cash that can be spent “without further appropriation” to, among other things, gobble up more private property.
Occupy EPA, Not Wall Street
We are not in good shape. Economic growth has stagnated. Unemployment is at an unacceptable rate. Debt is wreaking havoc on economic stability.
Congress Should Promptly Repeal or Fix Unwarranted Provisions of the Dodd–Frank Act
Many provisions of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act contravene America’s basic principles of free enterprise, limited government, and individual freedom and place obstacles across the path to economic growth and job creation. Congress should promptly repeal or correct all of them, starting with some of the most egregious provisions, which deal with government intrusion into internal corporate governance, government takeovers of financial businesses, government control of mortgage markets, and government regulation of consumer finance.
Another Federal Program Is Not the Answer to Deal with Natural Disasters
It is heartbreaking to see the destroyed homes, scattered possessions, and lives shattered by recent tornadoes in Alabama, Missouri and elsewhere. Many have lost loved ones and businesses while large parts of communities have been tragically leveled. Yet creating a new federal program would not be a worthy response to the plight of those affected by the twisters.
ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank Act:
What Would Hayek Say?
In what is probably his most famous work, The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek was principally concerned about the strong interest in economic planning among British intellectuals in the 1940s. Because planning would inevitably require reducing competition and eliminating the pricing system, he saw it as a major step along the path to socialism--the "serfdom" in his title.