The ‘Fourth Branch’ of government: bureaucracy
To the editor:
Due to changing times and economic conditions, a so-called fourth branch of government has arisen. This branch is the governmental bureaucracy. The bureaucracy spans 14 different departments, Innumerable independent and dependent agencies, and governmental corporations. Though these mainly fall under the President, they are rarely completely subject to his control. It even hires administrative law judges when cases regarding the regulations arise. The federal bureaucracy has the powers of the three normal branches, but it doesn’t have the same Constitutional restrictions. This is why the federal bureaucracy is a dangerous force.
Sprawling and inefficient, the federal bureaucracy is the perfect example of the horrors of big government. The departments are given large amounts of taxpayer money, which is constantly wasted and mismanaged. The Department of Veteran Affairs has a budget of several billion dollars, and still our veterans aren’t cared for properly. Their forms are lost or forgotten, and they often don’t receive the care they need. The Department of Education and The Department of Housing and Urban Development have massive budgets as well, but since when is it the government’s job to provide education or housing? Government’s original purpose was to punish evil and reward good, not give away free stuff. The paternalistic rather than protectorate view of the government has contributed to the growth of these massive departments. When government becomes this big, one’s basic freedoms are at risk. Agencies like the EPA make people spend millions of dollars, move businesses, and halt business growth just to fix or help clean supposed environmental pollution or disasters. Due to the presence of a single endangered species a business owner can be forced to build his new factory somewhere else. It isn’t the government’s job to control private business, but agencies like the EPA get away with it. The FDA imposes so many regulations that companies spend more money and resources trying to comply with the regulations than making new products. Agencies like the EEOC have tried to limit personal freedoms by labeling a Bible on an employee’s desk harassment. The federal government is taking hard-earned taxpayer dollars to fund departments and agencies that are both incompetent and trying to further the government’s liberal agendas.
There are many solutions to restore the freedoms that governmental departments and agencies have taken from us. The government could completely remove some of the parts of the bureaucracy and greatly shrink the others that remain. Congress could greatly decrease the annual budgets of these agencies and departments, allowing fewer harmful regulations to get passed. The executive branch of the government, under which most of the bureaucracy falls, could also be examined and changed. These changes are by no means easy to institute, but they must be tried if we want to pass our liberty and freedom down to our posterity.
As a tenth-grader studying the Constitution, I can see the federal bureaucracy is not what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. Literally thousands of convoluted and conflicting regulations, agencies that promote handouts rather than hand-ups, and unelected federal civil servants controlling Americans are glaring problems of the federal bureaucracy. It is to be hoped that we remove or shrink the bureaucracy’s power before it is too late.
Christopher Manta
North Fort Myers