According to Article I of the Constitution of the United States of America, “All Legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Simply stated, Congress passes the laws. Why then does the Congress seem so impotent as opposed to the executive branch of our government? The reason is that Congress has abdicated their law-making responsibility to legislative assistants and the executive branch of government. By abdicating their responsibility to others they are taking our money on false pretenses and therefore should be fired.

A simple example of this irresponsibility is the Affordable Care Act. This piece of legislation is gigantic in size and then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the members of Congress to pass it so that everyone could find out what was in it. Is this the type of behavior you want your member of Congress to have? Did those members truly represent their constituents or were they playing politics with everyone’s life? I contend the latter was the case. Why do you pay their salary for possibly not representing your interests? The reason is that the typical American voter is uniformed and sometimes stupid. They permit their congressional representatives to lie and deceive and then re-elect them to office. How stupid can you be? When is the American public going to wake up and demand honesty from their representatives? The longer this behavior is acceptable, the closer we come to losing our personal freedoms and our country. This situation can only be corrected when voters have had enough of this behavior and demand reform.

Why do these bills have to be so large and, as has anecdotally been reported, written in legalese? There is no reason or justification for this. If you want the law to be followed and understood by everyone, then you must write the law in simple English. Writing laws in a so-called legal format only invites the lawyers to file a lawsuit. Poor and vague legislation are a lawyers dream and we all know that they charge by the hour and have no budget or schedule. Cha ching, cha ching, cha ching. Guess who pays the bill.

To eliminate this waste, we need any bill’s sponsors to write the bill and take responsibility for it before it is voted on. Furthermore, after the law has been passed, these members of Congress must participate and direct any and all regulations that may be needed as I have described in my book. The seeds of corruption are planted when an agency has the ability to issue regulations that become law and then has the power to enforce them. It destroys the constitutional separation of powers and is poor governance.

Shouldn’t we be electing the best and the brightest to represent us in Congress instead of the lazy and dumbest? I use the term lazy because it has been reported that Congress while in session works less than five days each week. If they did their jobs and helped write the regulations needed to support legislation, maybe they would not have so much free time. Please remember, they are getting paid to pass laws to meet our needs. The schmoozing and campaigning must not be done on the clock but on off time from work. Is it fair that most people must work five days each week to earn enough to provide for their families and government workers do not have to do the same?

As a young chemical engineer during the 1970s, I remember thinking that it was much easier to build refineries and chemical plants here in the United States than it was in Europe where they had all those regulations. Obviously, that is no longer true. It is also obvious to me that while some regulation may be needed, when thousands of pages of regulations which become law are issued and approved, the regulations become an abuse of power to use government force and are very much counterproductive to progress and innovation.

The practice of congressional oversight is for the most part a waste of time and money. When the legislative branch abdicates their law making responsibility to the executive branch and then does not like what was done with the regulations, they hold hearings in an attempt to correct any problem. Under current practice which is briefly described in my book, this can be cumbersome and inefficient. If the legislature had done their job and issued any and all regulations needed to support the new law, there would still be oversight needed to verify that the law had been correctly implemented and enforced, but changes to regulations should be minimal. The policy of letting the executive branch of government write and enforce regulations is truly an abdication of Congressional responsibility. It is like letting the fox guard the hen house and then wondering why there are missing chickens. The constitution makes no mention of the executive branch writing regulations that become law.