President Joe Biden’s heavy hidden hand in signing costly and far-reaching federal rules and regulations is more threatening and long-lasting to America’s democracy than the rants and protests of his political foes, according to deregulation supporters.
“Biden’s appetite for federal power is insatiable as far as one can tell, and to borrow the phrase from the title of his talk, does not reflect the ‘soul of the nation,’” said Clyde Wayne Crews, the vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Crews has been charting Biden’s regulatory agenda and found that it has piled on new rules and stopped cold former President Donald Trump’s campaign to eliminate red tape.
“It is his own policies that represent the threat to democracy,” he said.
In response to Biden’s address last Thursday at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Crews just posted five examples of the Democrats’ “administrative state” that will allow the government to override the public’s wishes and let the bureaucracy push deeper into everyday life.
“Biden chose to use the word ‘threat’ nine times, invoking ‘extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic’ and the ‘power we have’ to meet those challenges. But he never once looked in the progressive mirror, never evidenced any sense of self-awareness,” said Crews.
Leading his list of authoritative moves, Crews cited the president’s campaign to end Trump’s deregulatory bid. “There has been a repudiation by Biden of the Trump regulatory streamlining agenda so thorough that it has undermined even pre-existing regulatory oversight norms like basic cost-benefit analysis,” he said.
He also warned that Biden’s so-called “whole-of-government” campaign is forcing decisions through an equity and green agenda lens.
In seeking a regulatory route rather than using legislation to push his agenda, Crews said that Biden is following a model set by former President Barack Obama, who promised to use a “pen and phone” to order up his policies that Congress would not agree to.
That led to historic levels of government regulation. Crews said he sees that occurring again and is hopeful that a new Republican-led Congress will put the brakes on.
“It will take years to unravel the havoc wreaked by Biden,” he said.
