Rein in the government -- beginning with the EPA!

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. -- US Declaration of Independence

Congress has created scores of agencies which are out of control and which don't really solve the problems they were intended to solve.

Most of these agencies have no constitutional authority to exist (see Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution). These agencies are under the executive branch, transferring to the president ever-expanding extra-constitutional power.

These agencies employ hundreds of thousands of employees who are unaccountable to the voters and even to Congress. Congress has abdicated its legislative power by delegating most of its lawmaking authority to these unaccountable bureaucrats. The US Constitution was designed specifically to prevent such abuses!

Congress has shown little interest in reining in any of the monsters it has created.

Among the worst of Congress' monsters is clearly the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Over the years, this agency has imposed ever harsher standards for fuel economy which have resulted in cars and trucks that are so lightweight and fragile that they disintegrate in collisions and cannot carry the payload (in weight or passengers) that vehicles of 50 years ago could carry. This is the reason SUVs have become so popular -- not because soccer moms need or want a huge four-wheel-drive four-door truck with an enclosed cargo area, but because they simply need a vehicle that will safely and comfortably carry what a full-sized 1964 Ford station wagon could carry. (When you really need to get some work done, ya gotta burn carbon or fire up a nuke.) But, today's laws are based on the presumption that we all want and deserve nothing more than a Yugo.

Now, Obama has announced his instructions to the EPA to further tighten fuel economy standards for trucks. This is nothing more than another step toward forcing manufacturers to make products that the consumers, farmers, and businesses don't want or need.

Every member of Congress must muster the courage and integrity to reassert its sole legislative authority under Article I of the US Constitution by:
1 - Make the laws, not delegate power to make laws,
2 - Where law-making authority is delegated, all such regulations must be reviewed and ratified by roll-call vote of Congress,
3 - All current agencies must be reviewed for constitutionality and those found to not comply with authority given in the Constitution must be sunseted within 5 years,
4 - All future agencies created must have a maximum five-year sunset.

Congress must immediately begin these steps by eliminating the EPA. Where necessary, the roles now assumed by the EPA will continue to be accomplished at the state level as required by the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution.

What are your congressmen doing right now to cut the size and power of our bloated, intrusive, oppressive, inefficient, expensive federal bureaucracy?