Want to rein in government? You have to cut budgets | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- REINS Act forces congressional votes on major regulations with $100M impact.
- Public choice theory predicts politicians pursue self-interest, not fiscal restraint.
- True restraint requires limiting government functions via spending cuts or amendments.
Sometimes you just have to “rein them in.”
No, I am not talking about your children. Efforts are afoot to rein in our elected officials, the politicians.
David McIntosh, President of the Club for Growth, spoke this month at Boise State University as part of the Brandt Foundation Lectures. Mr. McIntosh’s lecture included support for the new REINS Act, or Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act.
This legislation has been written to address the long-running concerns of voters. That is, that elected officials, and especially unelected bureaucrats, get carried away. They do too much. The Club for Growth supports this new law because it will supposedly restrain government and thereby lower the national debt.
Economic theory and historical evidence suggest that the new rules are unlikely to work.
Public choice theory is an area of study that applies economic principles to political processes. The theory starts with the assumption that politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by self-interest. They seek reelection and do better for themselves when the government’s budget is larger.
Just like in other organizations, government decisions are influenced by incentives, just like market decisions. Further, special interest groups often have disproportionate influence on policies due to the concentrated benefits of many laws, for which the costs are widely dispersed to all taxpayers.
If passed, the REINS Act will require that “major” federal regulations (those with an economic impact over $100 million) be approved by a vote in Congress before they can take effect. The idea is to remove the power of unelected agency officials and return it to our elected representatives.
By requiring congressional approval, the REINS Act may make elected officials more directly accountable. It could lead to more public debate and scrutiny of major rules.
But this new law doesn’t change incentives. Elected officials will still benefit from “doing something” about any and all concerns the voters raise. There is nothing in the law to prevent the advancement or obstruction of new spending or regulations for political reasons.
The lesson here, and that of public choice theory, is that the only way to rein in government is to limit what it does. Spending reductions or a balanced-budget amendment are more likely to achieve what the Club for Growth and others seek.
Peter Crabb is a professor of economics and the director of the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa.