“Democracy” Means Regulations Written by Bureaucrats Cannot Be Overturned by Congress and the President

[KT is still recovering from surgery. We look forward to her return soon. – Buck]

You may have heard that I am not a fan of electric vehicles being jammed down our throats by the enemies of liberty, so this headline obviously excites me: “Senate sends measure axing California EV mandate to Trump’s desk — sidestepping parliamentarian.”

But it also infuriates me, because we are seeing the “Save our democracy” movement evolve into a bizzarro world where regulations written by bureaucrats, and which effectively serve as federal law, are immune from being overturned by Congress, the law-making body under the Constitution.

The reason it is so important to overturn this regulation is that it has effectively allowed California to determine vehicle standards for the whole country.

The Senate voted Thursday to axe California’s phaseout of new gas-powered cars, making a controversial move to sidestep the parliamentarian in the process. The vote was 51-44, and the measure now heads to President Trump’s desk; he is expected to sign it.

Now with both houses of Congress voting to overturn the regulation, and President Trump vowing to sign it, in a normal world the regulation would be dead. We no longer live in a normal world.

Both the House and Senate have voted to axe federal approval of California’s standard using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to strike down recently approved regulations with a simple majority. But the Senate parliamentarian and Congress’s Government Accountability Office, have found that the Biden administration EPA’s decision is not subject to the act because it is a waiver, not a regulation.

Democrats are arguing that there is some nuance of this regulation that forever prohibits Congress and the President from rolling it back. California Governor Gavin Newsom and Senator Adam Schiff, among others, have vowed to go find a District Judge somewhere to overrule Congress and the President, and thereby rule that regulations created by communist bureaucrats are forever immune from being terminated by actual lawmakers.

Whatever form of government we have, it is not a “democracy” if bureaucrats are writing laws and judges prohibit lawmakers from blocking those regulations.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 10:00 AM

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