Member-only story
Regulate Republican Regulations
The GOP is behind the worst red tape in government.
It’s ironic how aroused the GOP perennially gets over bashing Democrats for crafting too many regulations and increasing the size of bureaucracy because it’s actually often Republicans who increase the amount of red tape.
Let’s consider food stamps as a poster boy example of Republican outrage against the government. The policy exists because Democrats believe that if citizens do not have enough money to survive, the government should try to help them so they and their families do not starve to death like oppressed peoples living in corrupt, failed states occasionally do. It’s a fairly mild charitable expectation for a country that culturally considers itself “exceptional,” “globally indispensable,” and a “beacon of freedom, liberty, and prosperity” to act upon.
Democrats therefore support policies that give assistance to everyone who qualifies, and there is a very simple, straightforward way to do this given that every single year Americans file tax returns so the federal government knows how much money people make. In theory, by utilizing this already collected information, there need not be much of any overhead other than what it takes administerially to mail out food stamps to eligible individuals because the government can easily determine if someone qualifies or not.
