‘If You’re a Hammer…’

Decades ago, as a pipefitter and welder in nuclear plant construction, I worked alongside many of the local union’s plumbers (the skill sets overlap).  It’ll probably come as a surprise to most that plumbers actually hold their profession in high regard.

“They can joke about that butt-crack all they want,” they’d say, “but when the toilet backs up or the sink’s leaking, they ain’t calling their banker or their stockbroker!”  (That’s the clean version.)  Oh, they were full of job-related humor (“Your crap is our bread-and-butter”… “It smells like money to me!” etc.), but most plumbers honestly believe their profession belongs near the top of the occupational pyramid.

I’ve also worked as a truck driver, construction laborer, factory worker and forklift driver, and as an instructional designer and trainer engaged with all levels of workers, from laborers to nuclear plant operators and engineers, and the same holds true in all those occupations.

But isn’t that natural?  Don’t most people elevate what they do for a living to a position of prominence, at least in their own mind?  Nobody wants to feel like their work doesn’t matter, and the fact that we spend about 60% of our available living hours doing our jobs (once you factor in sleep, time for showers, meals, and travel) contributes to this almost universal tendency to magnify the value of our labor.

So it should come as no surprise to us that people who work in government typically believe their work is important.  The old saying, “The government ought to do something” seems to be the motivating mantra for government workers generally, and boy, are they “doing something.”

In a recent essay for The American Spectator, I wrote about the “Unconstitutionality Index,” a concept devised by Forbes magazine contributor Clyde Crews, Jr., which revealed that the 2020 Congress passed 177 laws, while unelected federal bureaucrats issued 3,038 rules or regulations.  (I was shocked that Congress had passed so few laws, since they insist on butting into citizens’ everyday lives, but then I found that for the past five decades they’ve been passing legislation at a 503 bills-per-year average, so I guess they’re running out of things to legislate!)

But over 3,000 rules/regulations in one year?  Surely that’s an outlier; I wouldn’t think there would be that many more things left to regulate.  Wrong… bigly (in current parlance).  From 2009 to the end of 2022, federal agencies imposed a total of 49,315 rules and regulations on the American people, averaging 3,522 new rules per year!  It’s apparently not just the ATF or FBI that have run amok.

Those rules and regulations cost us another $1.9 TRILLION annually, over and above our taxes.  To paraphrase Groucho, “I love my wife, too, but I…”  (oh, I can’t actually write that). How about, “Lighten up just a bit on the rules and regs, huh?!”  This is supposed to be a free country!

The page count in the Federal Register (the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations) is typically the gauge for bureaucratic activity.  It’s not perfect (some rules don’t get enacted, a rule canceling an older rule gets added, a short rule may actually cost more than a long rule, etc.), but it’s in the ballpark.  Since 2009, that total has hovered around the 80,000-page level — that’s right, 80,000 pages of rules and regulations…each year.

In 2016, Obama’s last year, the Register reached an all-time high of almost 96,000 pages; the following year (despite Obama adding 7,630 pages as he left office), the count dropped to just over 61,000 (Trump’s actual “net” count was 53,678, the lowest since 1990).  Under Biden the count has been 86,207… 73,321 …and 80,756 pages.

Regardless of your political philosophy, that is far too many rules and regulations from government.  The Founders established our nation based on free markets, individual liberty, and limited government — government today is clearly not limited, and both individual liberty and free markets are suffering because of it.

As of December 2022, there were 2.95 million Americans working for the federal government.  Understand, I’m not blaming them; they’re just doing their jobs.  If you’re a bureaucrat, making rules is what you do.  But a lot fewer federal employees would mean a lot less government encroachment on our lives.

Vivek Ramaswamy, GOP candidate for president, has proposed eliminating several federal agencies and firing up to 75% of federal employees.  Since it seems doubtful Vivek will get the nomination, if President Trump would choose him as his VP and turn him loose… that would be an excellent start on reclaiming our freedom from government!

Image generated by AI.