As the discussion of what the States might do during a Constitutional convention has been kicked around for a few years and is getting some traction (as seen at Instapundit), here is a quick and simple amendment to consider:
Proposed Amendment
1) All regulations shall be approved by a simple majority of Congress.
2) Any regulation may be removed by either house of Congress.
3) All legislation for all laws shall be reauthorized every ten years, to include all regulations. All prior government laws and regulations shall be reauthorized on the final number year they were first instituted.
4) All directly granted bodies mentioned specifically in the Constitution are exempt from reauthorization. All directly granted bodies are not exempt from regulatory reauthorization procedures.
This concept is known as a 'sunset' law that would sunset every provision ever passed by any Congress or regulatory body formed by Congress so that Congress must take active steps so as to re-affirm that these bodies and regulations are actually necessary.
The ability to get a simple majority in either body of Congress to strike down regulations should be enough to curb offending regulations.
Do note that this proposed Amendment is incorporated, in part, to the States so that every State gets a 'sunset' law. It is up to the States to consider which bodies they have that pass laws so that the proper ten year sunset cycle is implemented in each State for State level concerns.
This will keep the US Congress and State legislative bodies very, very busy for a decade to clear out the backlog. And anything that isn't reaffirmed goes away. The default position of any government is that it only has power on approval of proper legislation passed and reaffirmed on a frequent basis. Do note that this includes ALL government activities, and only those mandated by the US Constitution or State Constitutions must be kept, but their regulatory ability is also under scrutiny.
Sunshine is the best policy for transparency as a disinfectant.
Sunsets allow for old ideas to pass away and only those positively reaffirmed will survive any nightfall, others live like mayflies and die out very quickly, indeed.
Supporting Friends and Allies
2 comments:
Sounds like a plan!
My thanks!
I did this to show that you don't need yet another body of Congress or some other apparatus to remove unwanted parts of government.
Make all parts of government unwanted when not reaffirmed, so that they go away without support. And that those parts that get odious see their reach diminish... plus involve Congress directly in the approval of regulations so that they have direct veto on them. Since the power is granted, a regulation is an affirmation a power is used properly. A regulation comes from the Executive thus requiring no affirmation from a President save to submit it to Congress.
End the finger-pointing and end government taking power always and giving it back, never. Sunset and regulatory oversight and removal via representative systems would get us out of this mess very quickly. If we dared to do it.
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