The Importance of the REINS Act

Last Friday afternoon, the House of Representatives passed the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act by a vote of 232 to 183. The measure, re-introduced by Representative Todd Young (R-IN), proposes that any regulation expected to have an economic impact of at least $100 million or more be approved by Congress before implementation.
In other words, the bill proposes that we follow the Constitution.
Libertarians believe that a consistent adherence to the Constitution is both the most moral and the most practical way to govern our society. We recognize that government authority derives from and is limited by the document, and thus that limited government under a higher law is the cornerstone of our American system. With this in mind, it is imperative that liberty-minded Americans support the newly re-introduced REINS Act.
“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,” reads Article I, Section I of the U.S. Constitution.
Most Americans probably assume that laws are passed by Congress. After all, Article I, Section I says so in plain ink. And in grade school, we all watched the Schoolhouse Rock jingle “I’m Just a Bill,” which detailed the evolution of potential laws through House committees, the House floor, again through the Senate, and finally to the President’s desk.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. 319 independent and executive agencies of unelected bureaucrats— Washington’s “alphabet soup”—have much more of a say in the implementation of federal regulations that control our activity. Federal agencies have finalized over 3,500 new regulations per year in each of the last 3 years, have added an average of 70,000 pages per year into the Federal Register over the last 10 years, and have created a regulatory burden estimated at some $1.75 trillion per year. This increases consumer costs, obstructs economic growth, and stifles job creation. This is especially true for small businesses, which have to pay approximately six times as much in compliance costs per employee on average, hindering the growth of new enterprise.

But this isn’t necessarily an indictment of regulation altogether. Indeed, regulations provide benefits as well, and some regulations may even provide greater benefits than costs. The problem is that these thousands of pages of new rules and regulations—many of which impose substantial harm to our economy—are being passed and finalized by an unelected few, without accountability or Congressional approval.
This is not a partisan issue; members of both political parties have delegated their lawmaking authorities to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats for decades. But this practice is directly opposed to our Constitution, which gives legislative authority to our elected representatives only. Creating agencies which pass, enforce, and judge their own laws without the consent of the governed is antithetical both to our democratic process and to the principle of separation of powers. As John Locke wrote in 1690,“the legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands; for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.” The legislative power is “to make laws, and not to make legislators.”
This is where the REINS Act comes in. By requiring congressional approval only for the most significant regulations, the bill represents an important step to restoring the constitutionality and accountability of our nation’s laws. As Case Western Reserve University Professor of Law Jonathan Adler pointed out, “the fact that regulations, like taxes, can both impose substantial costs and generate substantial benefits makes it that much more important that there be political accountability for federal regulatory decisions.”
But without the REINS Act, we will continue to be subject to thousands of new rules passed by the arbitrary whim of an unelected few. That is certainly no system our Founders established, and isn’t one which either political party should support.
When this bill reaches the Senate, I hope our elected officials take seriously their oath to “support and defend the Constitution.” For too long, that hasn’t been the case.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The author’s name was removed from this article retroactively at their request.