The Wheels of Housing Regulation Grind On

If at first you don't succeed, try try again. yikes.

Apparently Washington is convinced we are rich if everyone gets to live in their own house, since property tax collection is stable while other tax collection is down.

There is a story, which I don't know if it's true or not, about a guy hired to direct MP's away from the wet paint in a stairwell in Parliament during WWII in London. The position became permanent and decades later there still is a guy doing the same job, though no one can remember why.

True or not, it is true that once the state begins doing something, it is impossible to get it to quit doing it. I would imagine you can find buggy whip inspectors somewhere in the federal government.

PS, Texas has a commission that does nothing but look for old laws, commissions and agencies to kill. Also, its legislture doesn't meet every year, so they pass fewer regs.

fundamentalist,

Regulatory agencies are the means by which a legislature handles the details it doesn't have time to see to personally. Therefore, isn't a less active legislature likely to mean more reliance on regulatory agencies, not less?

But I would bet $100 that even if Tea Party sympathizers won a Congressional majority in November, this regulatory train would not be stopped. You have no idea how hard it is to change things in Washington.

I will also add that if I were in Congress and trying to make a difference, I wouldn't sweat the small stuff. I would work on reforming or abolishing the half-dozen programs with the biggest budgets or otherwise biggest effects. I wouldn't worry about the Federal mohair subsidy or the tea-tasters' commission. And that means I wouldn't worry about ending individual earmarks, but I'd work on all earmarks as a single concept.

More like a no-mindset. November will bring change but two years later the ship will be righted. Hopefully, it won't be too late by that time.