I am not taking credit for the well written quoted words below. I thought about gathering up the thoughts contained & saying it in my own way but I decided against it. I will simply give credit to Mr. Philip K. Howard for the well written quoted words &, at the end of this Foolishness, give you the opportunity to again read my well written words from a past Foolishness to show that, almost 8 years ago, I tried to say the same thing.
And you thought I was just being silly...
“The buildup of federal law since World War II has been massive—about 15-fold. The failure of Congress to adapt old laws to new realities predictably causes public programs to fail in significant ways.
The excessive cost of American health care, for example, is baked into legal mandates that encourage unnecessary care and divert 30% of a health-care dollar to administration. The 1965 law creating Medicare and Medicaid, which mandates fee-for-service reimbursement, has 140,000 reimbursement categories today and requires massive staffing to manage payment for each medical intervention, including giving an aspirin.
In education, compliance requirements keep piling up, diverting school resources to filling out forms and away from teaching students. Almost half the states now have more administrators and support personnel than teachers. One congressional mandate from 1975, to provide special-education services, has mutated into a bureaucratic monster that sops up more than 25% of the total K-12 budget, with little left over for early education or gifted programs.
Why is it so difficult for the U.S. to rebuild its decrepit infrastructure? Because getting permits for a project of any size requires hacking through a jungle of a dozen or more agencies with conflicting legal requirements. Environmental review should take a year, not a decade.
Most laws with budgetary impact eventually become obsolete, but Congress hardly ever reconsiders them. New Deal farm subsidies had outlived their usefulness by 1940 but are still in place, costing taxpayers about $15 billion a year. For any construction project with federal funding, the 1931 Davis-Bacon law sets wages, as matter of law, for every category of worker.
Bringing U.S. law up-to-date would transform our society. Shedding unnecessary subsidies and ineffective regulations would enhance America’s competitiveness. Eliminating unnecessary paperwork and compliance activity would unleash individual initiative for making our schools, hospitals and businesses work better. Getting infrastructure projects going would add more than a million new jobs.
But Congress accepts these old laws as a state of nature. Once Democrats pass a new social program, they take offense at any suggestion to look back, conflating its virtuous purpose with the way it actually works. Republicans don’t talk much about fixing old laws either, except for symbolic votes to repeal Obamacare. Mainly they just try to block new laws and regulations. Statutory overhauls occur so rarely as to be front-page news.”
Here is the link to the entire article quoted above...
http://www.conservativesolutionsproject.com/2016/04/01/the-crippling-hold-of-old-law/
Here is my past blog posting on the same subject...
There Ought To Be A Federal Law Against Federal Laws
Is it possible to keep track of all the Federal Laws?
November 03, 2008 | 05:05 PM
When members of our 9% Approval Rating Congress run for re-election they always tout in their "accomplishments" all the laws they proposed, sponsored and/or co-signed. They seem very proud when offering these facts up as undeniable evidence that they are deserving of the Public Trust (whatever that is).
The whole process is a mess…
Ø Members of Congress spend gobs of money traveling to places like France and China in order to gather facts about legislation they propose upon their return. The problem is their legislation has nothing to do with France or China.
Ø Once a law is passed, it has to be enforced. This requires more bureaucrats. (Bureaucrats … that can certainly be the subject of another Foolishness, Or Is It?).
Ø Once a law is passed, it has to be kept track of, recorded and disseminated to the folks back home. How in the hell can they keep track of, record and disseminate to the folks back home 1,000 new laws passed every year?
Ø If we were lucky, no one would know of and/or bother with the 1,000 new laws, once passed.
I think that we ought to be smart enough, at this point in our storied history, where we could have legislation in place that would require that two laws must be repealed for each new law passed. If this were to come to pass, in a hundred years or so, we ought to be down to a manageable 10,000 laws (give or take a few). That just might be a workable number.
I am coming around to the point of thinking where the incumbent who can verifiably proclaim in his campaign slogan, "I Did Not Do Anything Since You Sent Me To Congress", is the kind of Do-Nothing that will get my vote in the future.
Could it be that I know what I am talking about?
Would I kid u?
Smartfella
