Suchergebnisse

"You think you know why our government in Washington is broken, but you really don't. You think it's broken because politicians curry favor with special interests and activists of the Left or Right. There's something to that and it helps explain why these politicians can't find common ground, but it misses the root cause. A half century ago, elected officials in Congress and the White House figured out a new system for enacting laws and spending programs--one that lets them take credit for promising good news while avoiding blame for government producing bad results. With five key tricks, politicians of both parties now avoid accounting to us for what government actually does to us. While you understand that these politicians seem to pull rabbits out of hats, hardly anyone sees the sleight of hand by which they get away with their tricks. Otherwise, their tricks wouldn't work. DC Confidential exposes the sleights of hand. Once they are brought to light, we can stop the tricks, fix our broken government, and make Washington work for us once again. The book explains the necessary reform and lays out an action plan to put it in place. Stopping the tricks would be a constructive, inclusive response to the anger that Americans from across the political spectrum feel toward what should be our government"--

This book argues that Congress's process for making law is as corrosive to the nation as unchecked deficit spending.David Schoenbrod shows that Congress and the president, instead of making the laws that govern us, generally give bureaucrats the power to make laws through agency regulations. Our elected ";lawmakers"; then take credit for proclaiming popular but inconsistent statutory goals and later blame the inevitable burdens and disappointments on the unelected bureaucrats. The 1970 Clean Air Act, for example, gave the Environmental Protection Agency the impossible task of making law that would satisfy both industry and environmentalists. Delegation allows Congress and the president to wield power by pressuring agency lawmakers in private, but shed responsibility by avoiding the need to personally support or oppose the laws, as they must in enacting laws themselves.Schoenbrod draws on his experience as an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council and on studies of how delegation actually works to show that this practice produces a regulatory system so cumbersome that it cannot provide the protection that people need, so large that it needlessly stifles the economy, and so complex that it keeps the voters from knowing whom to hold accountable for the consequences. Contending that delegation is unnecessary and unconstitutional, Schoenbrod has written the first book that shows how, as a practical matter, delegation can be stopped

Schoenbrod contends that many of government's failings can be traced to Congress' practice of setting popular but inconsistent statutory goals then blaming bureaucrats for the unavoidable shortfalls.