**Posted by Phineas
Via Steven Hayward [1], this photo shows the stack of regulations released so far for Obamacare – a stack seven feet high:
In his post, Hayward writes:
…the effectual truth of modern American government is that Congress no longer enacts laws in the meaningful sense of the word. Instead, they pass wish lists, and delegate the actual lawmaking to unelected administrators.
Simple test: if Congress passes a statute–even one that is 1,600 pages long like Obamacare, but the law can’t go into effect as written, it is not really a law at all. The simple proof is the photo here that Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office has released, showing the 20,000-plus pages of regulations issued so far for the implementation of Obamacare. ”Regulation” is just a multi-syllabic word for “law,” after all. The point is, administrators–the slightly nicer term for “bureaucrats”–now govern us much more than our elected lawmakers do. One almost wonders why we have elections at all. (Actually, many bureaucrats actually do wonder this.)
(Emphasis added)
That bolded portion is the key. Since the advent of the administrative state under the progressives, beginning under TR and Wilson [2], but really taking off under FDR, only occasionally slowing since, and now in a full-throated roar [3] under Obama, Congress has ceded more and more of its lawmaking power to bureaucrats, chasing the progressive dream [4] of an administrative state free of messy democratic politics and that obsolete Constitution [5]. And this is only the start, not only of regulations under Obamacare, but the avalanche soon to come via Dodd-Frank, too.
Of course, while Congress gives away their duties to unelected mandarins, they continue to enjoy nice salaries and tremendous perks.
Nice work, if you can get it.
(h/t Jonah Goldberg [6])
(Crossposted at Public Secrets [7])