By RANDAL PAIR
Los Alamos

I am writing in response to Gary Stradling’s item about the Conservative Movement in the March 4, 2025 Los Alamos Daily Post (link).

I agree with much that he said. But as a retired member of the “bloated bureaucracy,” I must take exception of what he says about that bureaucracy.

Mr. Stradling apparently is unaware of the Administrative Procedures Act. As a former bureaucrat, the APA was in essence my bible. Laws passed by Congress (yes, and signed by the Chief Executive) are only able to state goals and requirements in general terms. The many different instances to which those goals and requirements apply are numerous and varied.

Congress simply cannot spell that all out in legislation. Instead, virtually all legislation of which I am aware gives the authority to a given agency within a given department to develop implementing rules. The agencies do that through initial outreach to affected parties, then drafting Proposed Rules.

Those proposed rules are published, in their entirety, in the Federal Register (FR), along with a preamble explaining the various choices that are proposed, and how those choices are believed to be the minimum necessary under the legislation. All persons are invited to comment; often public meetings are held. After this, Final Rules are published in the FR, again with preambles explaining how the final choices were made, and giving responses to all comments indicating how they were incorporated and how some were not.

After the Final Rules are published, any person with standing can file suit against those rules in federal District Courts. I personally know that quite often, affected industries (often industry associations) do file suit, and quite often they are successful. Many of the comments and lawsuits address whether the rules exceed the authority given in the legislation.

NOTHING in federal regulations happens without legislative authority. I further note that Congress must approve all federal funding; the appropriate Appropriations committees develop appropriation bills that are specific down to the number of personnel an agency may employee, at what grades, and even the number of vehicles and offices each agency can use.

Still further – though this is a topic with which I am only slightly acquainted – the appropriate Congressional committees also have an “oversight” responsibility. They are supposed to be monitoring how effectively the agencies are implementing the rules in order to achieve the goals of the legislation.

In short – the “bureaucracy” does not live and grow by itself – it ALL comes down to Congress. If you do not like the bureaucracy, blame your Congressperson.

There are a couple of other factors that critics of bureaucracy fail to consider. The first is the nature of business and industry. Much of our private sector operates under intense competition – which conservatives have always seen as a strength. But competition means that individual companies are not only finding new materials, designs, and materials. Most often, in my experience, they are always pushing the envelope of regulation, always finding little loopholes to exploit. Rules need to be extended to plug those new loopholes, or the purpose of the legislation is lost. In the first part of the 20th century, corporations and businesses were believed to have a duty to society. But the economist Milton Friedman convinced the private sector that the only duty of businesses and corporations was to their owners and shareholders. Money reigns supreme. Mr. Stradling, if you could convert the entire private sector to your brand of religion and conservatism, we would need little regulation.

Second, please note that we no longer live in horse-and-buggy small towns. Where we once had party telephone lines, we each now have two or three phone numbers and multiple email and social network accounts. Our transportation systems are complex. Most importantly, we are more numerous; we rub into each other much more frequently. GDP is thousands of times what it earlier was; shouldn’t we expect regulation to be at least a hundred times greater?

Finally, leaving the topic of bureaucracy, I remind Mr. Stradling that since well before Adam was written about, many other cultures and societies had many other sources of recommendations, encouragements, commandments, and enslavements regarding those cultures’ ways of life. There will surely be still others in the future. It insults me when Christians insist that only THEIR “truth” can be true.