Obama's Regulatory Surge Empowers Bureaucrats

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Government By Fiat: Quietly, on Christmas Eve while no one was looking, President Obama unveiled his regulatory plans for the coming year. Why all the secrecy? What's he got to hide? Plenty, it seems.

By law, Obama was supposed to issue his regulatory plans last April. But, as with so many other things, he simply ignores the laws he finds inconvenient. Who's to stop him?

Even the Associated Press has noticed:

"Since the election, the Obama administration has quietly reopened the regulations pipeline" on everything from "workplace safety to a crackdown on Wall Street," the news service wrote last week.

Boy, has it. But why? Obama's expansive agenda to boost the size, scope and power of the federal government depends on creating a new regulatory state — one that sidesteps the messy democratic necessity of seeking congressional approval for things he wants.

With the GOP still in control of the House, he knows a regulatory end-run is how he can get his way on everything from energy to the environment. And that's why he's nine months late in revealing his list of regulations.

With his machinations, Obama will go down as the biggest regulator in history — quite a feat, considering his competition includes such champion regulators as the two Roosevelts, LBJ and Richard Nixon.