Stop Me Before I Regulate Again!

I’m told that this morning the Senate will pass the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill.  2,300 pages long. Nothing so complex ever makes life better for consumers.  Mostly, it guarantees that you will not start a business without hiring specialists.      

“… the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell needed more than 150 pages merely to summarize the bureaucratic ecosystem created by Dodd-Frank”.

Yet politicians constantly create more rules. They think they know how to manage our lives better than we do. They are ignorant and arrogant…

Much of this regulation drives entrepreneurs to say: “I won't try.  I won't open a business. I won't hire someone because I probably can't fire him without getting into trouble. I better play it safe. I better not try anything new.” This kills opportunity. 

But the regulation never stops.  Last year the federal government added another 70,000 pages to the Federal Register.  Our 535 Congressmen think they’re not doing their job if they’re not passing laws. And those are just federal lawmakers. There are even more state legislators.  

The permanent bureaucracy is even bigger. There are more than a million federal employees, and ten million state and local bureaucrats. Most believe that if they aren't passing laws, they're not doing their job. 

I’ll cover the unintended consequences of their regulation on my show tonight. 

If I were a legislator, I'd pass the "Stossel Rule". It says: for every new law Congress passes, it must first repeal 5 old ones.  

It would be a start.