Congress creates an average of 56 new crimes each year.
Back in the dim and distant days when Republicans were fiscally conservative and Democrats started wars, there was a popular comic strip entitled “There Oughta Be a Law!” in which the propensity of Americans to legislate was satirized.
We no longer have that sagacious funny paper to remind us that we have too many laws – but its hardly necessary. Just read the news from Augusta. Each legislative session sees basketfuls of proposals, many of which become new laws. These laws may or may not solve problems, but nearly all of them require inspectors, administrators or police. Augusta contends with Washington for the lawmaking championship.
Forty percent of all laws written since the Civil War (143 years ago) have come into existence in the last 25. Even the most rabid fan of government might question such increased productivity.
While some proposals are corrective, far too many are coercive, and their parentage often makes interesting study. In the DNA of new laws, we all too often find greed, hunger for power, fear or more commonly than is good for us – the desire to empower morality. Marijuana or same sex-marriage are only a couple examples of this blue-stocking urge.
New law can be a camouflage. Thirty years or so ago Congress promised carmakers several years of grace from mandatory air bags if three-quarters of the states passed seat-belt laws by a given date. Phalanxes of lobbyists disguised as safety experts – but paid by the car-industry – promptly descended upon state Legislatures to argue mandatory seat belts for “safety” reasons. They were successful and air bags were set back years. Maine, fortunately, lagged behind this maneuver, but eventually succumbed to the annual urge to legislate.
New laws can produce unintended consequences. Rather than improving our elections, the national Campaign Financing Reform Act of just a few years ago resulted in an open sewer of money pollution. Laws for open meetings and procedures have become a labyrinth of minutiae that has often discouraged local government. Fluorescent light bulbs created unforeseen health and disposal problems.
Many new laws often serve to make compliance with earlier laws more complicated. The IRS labyrinth, which can be navigated only by paid experts, has been created by new laws created by successive Congresses.
There is sometimes the Alice in Wonderland effect. New law often makes old law look ridiculous. One of the reent Drug War laws specified that selling one-sixth of an ounce of crack cocaine (to a willing customer) must get the offender five years in jail. At the same time, existing law specified that committing rape (on an unwilling customer) may get the offender three years in the slammer. Alice, read a few law books.
The only sure-to-be beneficiary of any new law is the legal industry. New law tends to be rich grazing for herds of lawyers. The proposed “Flag Amendment to the Constitution” would have created entire law schools just to meet the ensuing demand. With the Maine Legislature considering 1,700 new laws this year – and probably enacting more than 300 – no wonder the state needs to subsidize the University of Maine Law School.
In the end, new laws will, more often than not, require more bureaucrats, more police and courts, and will mean fewer personal freedoms. And they will cost money. Like the airlines, governments charge extra for additional baggage.
The feds seem to blithely either disregard new costs, or lay them off on the states. Even Augusta specifies actions it fails to fund. Safety belts and helmet laws need patrolmen. Bilingual education requires teachers. Indecency requires censors. Pure food laws require oversight. Holidays cost everyone. Criminal laws mean more police, courts and jails. We already spend more on the costs of insuring correct behavior than the national budget of France. (Fortunately, the French definition of “correct behavior” seems a bit more relaxed than ours.)
As a public service, the records of those legislators who manage to restrain themselves from further complicating our lives might be compiled and published – something like the ratings currently issued by such groups as the NRA or the Sierra Club. It might be called the Honor Roll of Abstinence.
We would rarely go wrong using such a record of self-denial as a guideline in the voting booth.
Rodney Quinn, who lives in Gorham, is a former Maine secretary of state. He can be reached at rquinn@maine.rr.com.
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