Commenting yesterday on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s contention the the federal government should shut down a non-unionized private sector plant in South Carolina, Ed Morrissey offers a nice synopsis of the conservative view of government:
Government should have no interest in whether a particular plant is unionized or not, let alone assert authority in this area. Government exists to uniformly enforce the law without bias. Agencies like the NLRB want to use the color of authority to favor unions because they see that as a preferred social-engineering outcome — whether or not workers themselves want union representation or not.
We have come far from the legitimate exercise of government in this and many other areas. It’s time to demand a return of government to its proper boundaries, and perhaps eliminating altogether those agencies that have arrogated to themselves the power to impose their preferred social prescriptions through the abuse of agency authority. That would include the NLRB, the EPA, and a number of other federal entities.
Emphasis added. Exactly. This helps explain — in a most succinct manner — the rise of the Tea Party.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some government agencies and perhaps even Cabinet departments abolished, but not the EPA. We have an good interest in conservation and policing interstate pollution. The problem as I see it isn’t the EPA itself but the abuse of this agency by Administrations and agency personnel. Instead of abolishing the EPA I’d rather see it’s role and powers, as well as limits to both, clearly defined in legislation and maybe even folding the agency within the Interior Department so it can’t go rogue on it’s own anymore. Right now it’s so ambiguous that abuse is too easy and politically tempting.
John, kindly cite the provision of the Constitution which authorizes the federal government to do that. (Note: the Interstate Commerce clause won’t cut it… neither will General Welfare. Otherwise, they authorize practically anything and we may as well not have a constitution.)