IRVINE, CA--Environmentalists are up in arms about a Bush administration proposal to reduce red tape that prevents logging on federal lands. But, according to Robert Tracinski, senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, this battle is not just about preventing people from using the logs. It's also about conserving red tape. Robert W. Tracinski was a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute between 1997 and 2004.
Tracinski, also a columnist for Creators Syndicate, describes how environmentalists obtain through bureaucracy what they could not obtain in an open vote. "First, they introduce legislation in favor of some vague, seemingly positive generality, such as 'environmental protection.' Then, after the legislation is passed and a new regulatory agency is created to enforce it, that's when the actual decisions are made about what specific bans will be imposed on what specific lands. Governmental power passes down to an army of minor bureaucrats who are not accountable to the people and only vaguely accountable to Congress and the president."
"Federal regulatory agencies make thousands of rulings each year, adding about 80,000 pages annually to the Federal Register," says Tracinski. "Do you think Congress can exercise 'oversight' by debating all 80,000 pages of these regulations? Of course not. By its nature, the federal decree-issuing apparatus cannot be controlled, and it has only one tendency: to impose more regulations and make private activities like logging grind to a halt.
"The regulatory agencies are vast preserves of unaccountable power--and the Bush administration has, alas, only begun to thin their forest of regulations," says Tracinski. "What environmentalists object to is the very fact that there would be fewer rules--which means: less power for their army of unelected regulators to advance their anti-industry agenda."