Congress bailed on adding regulations

By Owen Nelson, Las Vegas

Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

The Tuesday letter “Stay out of the way, government” needs one clarification as I see it.

The writer is quite correct about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid bottling up most of the bills coming over from the House of Representatives.

The writer is also correct about too many laws and regulations that stifle the business world, but he is only partially correct when he says that such laws and regulations come from Congress.

Most laws, except for executive orders issued by the president, do come from Congress, but Congress has long ago abdicated its role in adding regulations — which modify existing laws and are as enforceable as the original law — to the agencies charged with administering the laws.

The Obama administration further complicated this situation when it gave Cass Sunstein, one of its 43 czars, the role of regulatory czar.

To give just one example out of thousands, the 2,000-plus-page Affordable Care Act, which Nancy Pelosi said Congress would have to pass so we could find out what is in it, has now been amended by regulations that far exceed the length of the law as it was passed.

My guess is that Pelosi knew all the time that reading the bill was pointless because the regulation process will allow officials to change or add to the law at will.

Such changes appear in the Congressional Record, but they are largely unnoticed by Congress, the media and the general public.