Reining in the regulatory state

Congress passed and the president signed into law 125 bills in 2009, noted Wayne Crews, a vice president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in an op-ed last month in the Washington Times.

Yet, "Your tireless federal regulatory agencies were even busier: They issued 3,503 rules and regulations." Regulations considered in recent years "have included energy-efficiency standards for clothes washers and pool heaters, SUV emission rules and the Consumer Product Safety Commission's designs to regulate escalators (safer than unregulated stair steps, by the way) as a 'consumer product,' " Mr. Crews notes.

He left out toilet tank size, light-bulb configuration, regulatory restrictions on how much water a shower head can deliver, what kind of refrigerants we can use in our air conditioners, and the upcoming ban on top-loading washing machines ­-- along with lots of other meddling still justified under the guise of fighting "man-made global warming."

The year's Federal Register -- the daily depository of federal regulations -- already tops 61,000 pages. According to research conducted for the Small Business Administration by economists Nicole V. and W. Mark Crain, annual off-budget regulatory costs exceed $1.7 trillion.

So much for the quaint constitutional notion that, "All legislative Powers ... shall be vested in a Congress of the United States."

"The unelected rule America," Mr. Crews concludes. "Welcome to 'regulation without representation.' "

In response, Kentucky Republican Rep. Geoff Davis and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., recently proposed the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny) to require congressional approval of major agency rules and regulations before they can become binding (Nevada Sen. John Ensign is a co-sponsor).

"Major rules" are those imposing $100 million or more in annual costs, the way Rep. Davis and Sen. DeMint figure it.

"Excessive federal regulation is a de facto tax on employers and consumers that stifles job creation, hampers innovation and postpones investment in the economy," the sponsors note. "When the game is always changing, small businesses cannot properly plan for the future. To provide stability, we will require congressional approval of any new federal regulation that has an annual cost to our economy of $100 million or more."

It's a modest and sensible proposal. Because it originates with the GOP, Democrats can be expected to offer knee-jerk opposition.

Resurgent Republicans should push the measure, anyway. Since Democrats will presumably continue to argue that private-sector job creation is one of their major goals, as well, let them explain on the record why thousands more jobs must be sacrificed for each new regulatory absurdity.