Political Quotes

“There certainly are some similarities. I will point out at the outset there are some differences, one of them being we have, fortunately, actually had the text of this for a little bit longer than I think Congress had the text of the Affordable Care Act when it passed. We have had some opportunity to amend it in committee. That has been nice. But, yes, there are a lot of similarities. Both bills are very lengthy. Both bills involve excessive--remarkably excessive--delegation of authority to decisionmakers in another branch of government, within the executive branch. There are, by one count, something like 490 instances of delegated discretionary decisionmaking authority. You know, this is a problem because for centuries, great thinkers, including our Founding Fathers but really going back even before them, have warned that legislative power involves the power to make laws, not the power to make lawmakers. To a very significant degree, the lawmaking power is not subject to delegation. It should not be delegated to someone else. Obviously, we have to delegate a lot of tasks to the executive branch. It is the executive branch's job to implement, to enforce, to apply the laws that we pass.…”