Government Growth

In that same NR issue, Fred Schwarz reminds us how government control expands over time.

[Debating the Civil Rights Act of 1964,] one senator asserted that it would make racial hiring quotas mandatory for businesses. Sen. Hubert Humphrey was adamant in his reply: "If the senator can find in Title VII ... any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion, or national origin, I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there.

Think about that when considering the current Obamacare bills. Quotas were not in the original civil rights bill, but “what was sold 45 years ago as a simple, ringing assertion of equality has long since degenerated into a morass of lawyers, consultants, and bureaucrats enforcing the opposite of what the legislation promised.”

Likewise:

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was enacted to fight discrimination ... before long, the federal government was dictating banks' and insurance companies' business decisions, forbidding agents to answer a customer's questions about subjects like a neighborhood's population mix, and even regulating the race of models used in real-estate ads.

When the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970, America's air was filthy, its rivers caught on fire, and its wilderness areas were rapidly being despoiled. Today the situation is much better, but instead of sticking to what it was created for, the EPA regulates shower heads and holds up vital public works for years over minor threats to endangered species.

The Obama-care relevant message for today:

So what if the Democrats' health-care bill does not explicitly mention a single-payer arrangement, abortion funding, death panels, treatment for illegal aliens, or any of the other "myths" that "alarmists" are peddling? There's plenty of wiggle room, with determinations to be made by boards and committees and experts and administrators; and even where no explicit authority to regulate exists, imaginative bureaucrats and their judicial enablers will conspire to create it.

The cost, of course, will increase far beyond projections; just look at Social Security and all the other federal entitlement programs. At the same time, careerism, mission creep, idealism ripening into zealotry, and simple lust for power will combine to expand the bureaucracy's authority--only this time, its authority will be over the most important and personal details of our lives. There's never been a social reform program that stuck to what it was designed for; why will the biggest one of all be any different?

It won’t be.