By ธนากร บัวพรหม @Adobe Stock
What Missing Billion Dollars?
President Joe Biden isn’t just the most regulation-happy president in modern history, undermining the economy in profound ways. Joe Biden has abused rulemaking, reports Liesel Crocker in NRO, to spend more than a trillion dollars of taxpayer money without any say from Congress.
Onerous Regulation
Democrat activists are excited about Kamala Harris’s choice of Tim Walz as her VEEP. Walz and his progressive allies supported the usual mishmash of new housing subsidies and mandates, alerts Judge Glock in NRO.
In Minnesota, as elsewhere, they championed worthwhile efforts to modify some housing regulations, but their desire for “equity” and commitment to fighting climate change meant they were happy to impose new and even more onerous regulations. Walz’s housing legacy is not a model to be emulated.
Voters should know that Minnesota Governor Walz signed a law requiring new commercial buildings, including large apartments, to “use 80 percent less energy” by 2036 compared with earlier this century.
For many households, any supposed savings on their energy bills will be more than offset by higher up-front payments and mortgage costs. The real reason for such mandates is not reducing the cost of living or making housing more affordable; instead, it is pushing a net-zero-carbon agenda at the expense of home buyers and renters.
From Stephanie Ebbert and Deirdre Fernandes at The Boston Globe:
What Possibly Could Go Wrong?
August 2023: A Boston housing official signed a contract to rent 149 hotel rooms to the homeless In August 2023 at taxpayer expense.
With a spiraling homeless crisis, an influx of migrants, and the state’s shelters past capacity, the urgency was clear: The state agreed to spend $16.3 million at the hotel through the end of June — $400,000 of it before the deal was even finalized.
The State Stays Mum
Who got paid? Shh … the state won’t say:
Reporters and photographers have been allowed at shelters on select occasions. Contracts bar vendors from speaking directly to the media about the shelter program … all inquiries (are required to) go through state agencies. Providers who run the shelters have notified the state of 600 serious incidents since January 2023, many of them troubling enough that police, fire, and medical services had to respond.
Those reports have not been made public to date, however. Shelter families and staff have also submitted 40 complaints since January 2023 to a hotline operated by the state housing agency; their content is mostly unknown since lawyers for the agency redacted most details before sharing them with the Globe.
Pejorative Spending without Congressional Approval
Is Boston to be the national model? Joe Biden’s regulatory spending spree has disturbed a national hornet’s nest. Future Democratic and Republican presidents are sure to add to the chaos, reports Liesel Crocker in NRO. Lots of luck to Congress getting the hornets settled back.
(President Joe Biden) has abused rulemaking to spend more than a trillion dollars of taxpayer money without any say from Congress.
Republicans obviously don’t want President Kamala Harris to pick up where Biden left off, while Democrats surely don’t want Donald Trump to have unchecked power in a second term.
Joe Biden’s Abusive Spending Spree
What is needed is for both parties to pass the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act. The bill would go a long way to protect Congress’s authority and help insulate taxpayers from bamboozlement.
The REINS Act would require Congress to vote on any major regulation before it goes into effect. If Congress doesn’t rein in the presidency, taxpayer spending by executive fiat will surely get worse, undermining Congress’s most important power — the power of the purse.
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