Although Republicans retain the control of the U.S. Congress that they won in in 1994, they have done little good with their power. U.S. President Bill Clinton, despite his endless scandals, continues to aggressively expand government. His administration has enacted 10,866 new regulations since 1997 alone.
Federal regulations cost the United States $737 billion last year, according to Thomas Hopkins of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Washington spent nearly $18 billion more to enforce its rules. That totals more than $7,200 per family -- not counting lost economic growth.
For years American constitutional scholars have decried Congress' "excessive delegation" of power to the hundreds of departments, agencies and bureaus that fill Washington. Average citizens have complained too -- after being fined by OSHA, penalized by the IRS, sued by the SEC or otherwise abused by one or another of the alphabet-soup bureaucracies. But legislators have been unwilling to give up a tool that effectively expands their power.