For Immediate Release: March 16, 2023
Contact: Ryan Hite, Communications Director
Beware The Slow Creep of Regulatory Bureaucrats, Not Sweeping Legislation
Washington, D.C.: “Many Americans are worried about huge, sweeping proposals and laws that will come to destroy our freedom, but the grim reality we face is far more strategic and subtle,” said Phyllis Schlafly Eagles President Ed Martin. “Poring over Biden’s proposed budget reminds us that the primary threat America faces from the left isn’t giant, broad changes in the law, but the slow creep of the administrative state.
Among the many troublesome proposals in Biden’s budget is a massive expansion of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The ATF would received a 13.6% bump from last year, but a more startling reality is that would put their budget nearly 50% higher than 6 years ago.
“That’s a massive growth in less than three presidential administrations,” Martin continued. “It reminds me of the attempt to more than double the presence of the IRS with 87,000 new agents (thankfully defunded by the House). What both of these dramatic increases in regulatory agents and budget show is one singular worry: the ability of the Administrative State to strangle industries and individual rights without the sweeping legislative changes of Congress.
“Why ban or confiscate firearms when you can regulate and tax them out of existence? Why raise taxes when you can hound and bankrupt people on the compliance end? Why suspend the First Amendment itself when you can simply give free school loans and get schools to willingly indoctrinate your agenda as a condition of funds?”
Martin concluded, “The chief enemy of We the People right now doesn’t sit in Congress but in the bloated bureaucracy of our regulatory agencies. Beware the Big Government’s plans to kill us with compliance rather than sweeping changes to our laws. We need the check and balance of Congress’s power of oversight and the purse. We need strong states to say no to federal intrusion. We must stop the leaping growth of the administrative state!”
###
