(RepublicanView.org) – Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah has indicated that the “swamp” in Washington, DC, still needs to be restrained. Speaking at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah alongside Sutherland Institute President Rick Larsen, the Senator claimed the biggest problem on Capitol Hill is that elected politicians have handed the country’s governance to unelected bureaucrats. He added that he does not blame federal employees for this crisis but lays the fault squarely at the feet of lawmakers in Congress.
“This is about accountability… those who make your laws should be elected and accountable through an election,” he said. Lee then recounted an incident when he asked the Congressional Research Service how many criminal laws there are in the United States and found that the answer was “unknown and unknowable.”
The reason is that so many laws are made not by elected representatives in Congress but by an executive branch agency, he recounted. However, he found out that there are 300,000 or more federal crimes on the nation’s books.
Lee is one of the backers of the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, introduced to Congress by Rep. Kat Cammack in January this year. The legislation would require all “major rules” to be approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate before they take effect.
A “major rule” was defined as anything that would increase prices for consumers or businesses, impact the economy by more than $100 million annually, or significantly affect competition, employment, investment, productivity, or innovation.
Senator Lee did not use the phrase “the swamp” during the event in Utah, but it is one repeatedly utilized by former President Donald Trump to describe the hefty bureaucracy in federal agencies and beyond. In recent attacks on the former President, GOP Presidential contender Ron DeSantis adopted the rhetoric, saying Trump failed to drain the swamp, whereas he managed to do so in the Sunshine State.
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