Witham: We are victims of too many regulations
William L. Witham Jr. is a retired Kent County resident judge who served over 40 years in Delaware’s justice system. He is also a former leader in the U.S. Army Reserve and National Guard, with 34 years of service, and a member of the Advisory Board of A Better Delaware.
Most people do not realize that federal and state regulation is exploding at a record pace. Over the last decade, Congress has adopted an average of 344 new pieces of legislation during each session. That amounts to about 2 million-3 million words of new federal law each year. That is not all; even the bills have grown in size, with the average page count of around two pages in the 1950s, compared to 18 today. The same is true for Delaware. When one considers the amount of paper that goes with these bills, we seem to be killing entire forests.
Is this due to the fact that our society is more complicated than it was in years past? Less than a hundred years ago, all the federal government’s statutes fit into a single volume. By 2018, the U.S. Code encompassed 54 volumes and approximately 60,000 pages, without adding the huge expansion of the Code of Federal Regulations, a collection of rules for the federal government. Each federal agency writes rules on implementing or interpreting laws. Delaware does the same for bills passed by our legislature.
Obviously, we need laws and regulations to maintain public order and safety. Yet we, as free people, lose a little bit more of our freedom when the government passes restrictions supposedly to improve our lives. For example, have you noticed that there are now limitations on what kind of car we must buy and what kind of appliance and heating system we have to buy for our homes? There are limits on how our meat and vegetables must be labeled and the type of bags we must use. The list goes on, with every product we buy or make. Some products we can no longer buy American-made, such as incandescent light bulbs. I am sure you have noticed that some of the household items we buy do not last or work as well as the “old” ones. Showerheads are federally regulated to restrict flow, as are toilets and garbage disposal units. Have you ever used the new gas cans? They are awful — the preregulated ones are in big demand. It is hard to think of any product that is not regulated, presumably for safety, and not trapped in some kind of forced design emanating from a federal or state agency. Even municipalities get into the act. As residents of Dover, we must use certain garbage cans for trash and recyclables. Have you noticed that Dover is now billing its residents on a quarterly basis for stormwater management, supposedly required by the federal government? The city apparently did this without notice or explanation and just sent bills out. Of course, the state now requires Delawareans to buy electric cars by a projected and improbable date. Most citizens of our state are aware of the controversy over the impact of wind farms coming off the coasts of Delaware and Maryland, and worry about the cost and impact. It makes us envious of states that have the remedy of referendums.
Government regulates all aspects of our economy and, to a large extent, our lives. Take meat, for example. It is not possible to raise cattle and sell the meat without jumping through many hoops and using independent processors. This benefits agribusiness but not small farmers. If you want to start a new business, the number of roadblocks you have to jump over is staggering. Try hiring one employee, for example. The bureaucratic requirements can be daunting — permits, licensing and IRS rules multiply the cost of doing business. It seems the bureaucracies simply cannot sit still. They make new regulations on a daily basis. There is no consideration of the economic cost and impact on growth and job creation. The United States has created whole industries entirely devoted to achieving compliance.
In the late 1970s, there was a bipartisan consensus to deregulate three industries: trucking, energy and telecommunications. All three initiatives were huge successes, and the prosperity of the 1980s is owed to these emancipations.
But this success was short-lived, in part due to the financial deregulation of 1983, which freed up the banking sector that was then blamed for every problem that followed, from the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s to the 2008 financial catastrophe. It is a given that some regulation is justified, but the government tends to always go overboard.
We can and do have faith in the private sector. No business wants its product or service to be a failure or attacked by the public. The business wants to be successful. Every professional field has an oversight organization that certifies and provides credentialing, apart from government mandates. For example, lawyers have the bar exam that regulates the admission of attorneys. Underwriters Laboratories, founded in 1894, independently certifies industries and has great credibility. Much of our bureaucratic regulation is too expensive, too arduous and too limiting for our free enterprises to thrive. In an ideal world, the government would only do what is mentioned in the Constitution and nothing more. That may not be possible, but we need to substantially push back from too much regulation and let our free society survive and thrive.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
