When James Madison and the other Framers fashioned a new constitutional structure in the wake of the failure of the Articles of Confederation they envisioned a vastly different government. Under the federalism model, states would be the dominant system with most of the revenue and responsibilities of governance. The federal government was virtually microsoptic by today’s standards. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies. [These numbers can be themselves misleading since much federal work is now done by contractors as part of downsizing but the work of the agencies has continued to expand. Moreover, technological advances have increased the reach of this workforce]. This growth since the founding has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined. The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations dailysoapbox-mydailysoapbox.blogspot/2014/06/constitutional-attorney-jonathan-turley.html
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 05:25:35 +0000
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