Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to speak about two bills that I am introducing today to address a serious and persistent threat to the integrity of our government: regulatory capture. Over the last 50 years, Congress has tasked an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies to administer our laws through rule-making, adjudication, and enforcement. Protecting the proper functioning of these regulatory agencies has led me to the topic of regulatory capture. I held a hearing on the subject last year in the Senate Judiciary Committee and now am filing two bills that will make our government more resistant to the ever-growing power of special interests. I urge my colleagues to join me in passing these important good-government measures. At bottom, regulatory capture is a threat to democratic government. ``We the People'' pass laws through a democratic and open process. Powerful interests then seek to ``capture'' the regulatory agencies that enforce those laws so that they can avoid their intended effect, turning laws passed to protect the public interest into regulations and enforcement practices that benefit limited private interests. This concept of ``regulatory capture'' is well-established in regulatory and economic theory. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson wrote this: ``If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don't you see that big business men . . .…”