NFB: The Curse of Government Over-Regulation

The Curse of Government Over-Regulation

By Doug Busselman | NFB, Executive Vice President

As this is being written a 79-page Federal Register notice is on the top of the working stack next to the computer keyboard, dealing with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Army Corp of Engineers proposal to rewrite the definition for the Waters of the United States

(WOTUS). Those currently in charge of the federal government believe that the progress made by the last administration need to be erased and their edicts need to be implemented to force compliance with the views that they have for command and control. Maybe if it were just the third rewrite - since 2015 - of what water (or non-water) that the federal government should have authority to rule over under the banner of the Clean Water Act, it might be frustrating, but wouldn’t be overwhelming. That however isn’t the case. Every instant there are more and more regulations and controls in the works, coming at us from federal, state and even local government entities. To put a timestamp for framing the context of this writing, yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate for employees who worked in an organization where at least 99 others were employed. Regardless of whether you support COVID vaccinations or consider it to be a matter of personal choice, just having one less federal regulation was a victory worth celebrating. Unfortunately, those “wins” are not coming very frequently right now, with those who are currently in charge of federal and state governments on a full-scale rampage to expand what is regulated and increase the degree of control they wish to carry out. The driving philosophy is that anything and everything should be covered by some type of control. These regulations are authored and implemented by whichever unelected group of bureaucrats believe that they should oversee. It isn’t rare for more than one bureaucratic agency having their own respective piece of the commandand-control pie. Yes, it is true that agency authorities have designated areas and operate with some direction of law, perhaps even taking direction from legislation for what their assignment is for a specific project. More from a federal perspective than in the State of Nevada, legislative guidance to federal agencies is less constraining and offers a wider range of options for the details that need to be incorporated into the regulatory mix. We have also seen multiple examples where government agencies decide for themselves what their assigned objectives should be without any changes in the oversight laws that are supposedly providing direction. The Clean Water Act hasn’t changed since any of the last three major regulation drafting projects were brought forward. Regardless, unelected bureaucrats who are not accountable to anyone other than themselves have initiated (by Executive Order in the last two instances that we can see) their plans to grab for putting in place their version of what should be the rules on what will be covered and how their regulating will be done.

In full disclosure - we do prefer the regulations that came from the work of the last administration, adopting the regulations called the “Navigable Waters Protection Rules” (NWPR). These went into effect in 2020 and from the perspective of agricultural producers and most landowners, the details were massive improvements over the Obama Administration’s WOTUS regulation package.

Why the Navigable Waters Protection Rule?

• The NWPR was a clear, defensible rule that appropriately balanced the objective, goals, and policies of the Clean Water Act. • Because clean water is a top priority, farmers and ranchers welcomed the clarity and common sense the NWPR provided. • The rule did not change who oversees waterways such as lakes, rivers and many streams—and it ensured states could enforce their own robust environmental laws.

“AFBF (the American Farm Bureau Federation) is disappointed EPA is returning to an overly complicated interim water rule.” AFBF President Zippy Duvall said when the proposed ‘new’ rules were published. “Overreaching regulations create major permit backlogs for the federal government and result in long delays for farmers and ranchers who are working to keep America fed. We are particularly concerned EPA is bringing back the significant nexus test. This caseby-case test threatens to unfairly regulate large areas of private land miles from the nearest navigable water.” In spite of what would be a better way to regulate, the current Administration is going to chase their version and will have to be dealt with.

Along with the necessary activities and public input that will be devoted to WOTUS regulations, the avalanche of all the other pending regulations from federal and state regulation writers will also need their share of attention. Reducing regulations was a major point of emphasis that the Trump Administration, pursued for the brief time that they had the opportunity to work on rolling back government’s over-reach. That is not where we’ve been heading under the regimes that are presently in place at the national level and have been in charge in Nevada for a while. From all signals and current experience we can expect even more to come by way of government agency overregulation. Reading the just-released annual 2021 update of the Nevada Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report, we clearly see the message that Nevada is not on track to meet the Greenhouse Gas Emissions that Governor Sisolak and the Nevada Legislature have established. These targets call for these emission reductions: • 28 percent reductions (from 2005 levels) by the year 2025 • 45 percent reductions (from 2005 levels) by the year 2030 • Zero or near zero Greenhouse Gas

Emissions by the year 2050 Included in the statement found in the “Conclusion section” of the report’s “Introduction” … “Heading into the 2023 Legislative Session, policymakers will need to make important policy and budget decisions necessary for Nevada to meet the SB 254 GHG reduction goals in 2025 and 2030, and beyond.” Beyond the burden on day-to-day life, caused by the challenges of having to deal and respond to the neverceasing intentions of government authorities to build their base of control on what can or cannot be done, an author who visited our country for 10 months in 1831 and 1832 had a very insightful understanding. Alexis de Tocqueville shared this observation in his book “Democracy in America” regarding increased regulations and rules – “Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” - Alexis de Tocqueville