How Governments Die

This week, the House Republicans decided to pass a law Rules issued by the executive branch concerning more than $100 million must get reviewed by the legislative branch. Though unlikely to pass the Senate, this performative legislation is problematic in multiple ways. For one thing, it’s a clear overreach of constitutional authority for the law-making branch to interfere with the executive branch’s operations. If Congress want money to be used in a certain way, then it should say so in the bills as passed. But there’s a second, more nefarious, possibility.

Consider the EPA, where the rule for Lead and Copper costs approximately $355 million to implement. That rule was last changed in 2019, and the estimated cost was over $100 million, so it would have had to go back to the legislature for review. Would people like Marjorie Taylor Greene even know how to calculate an appropriate return on investment for this? No. So either they would bring in experts (for months, perhaps years) to teach them about how to think about water safety properly (some might listen but safe to say not all). Then they would deliberate on it, and likely still lacking a thorough understanding, would try to reduce the price tag.

Meanwhile, Flynt, Newark, Jackson…people die from lack of quality drinking water. And this new rule may never get implemented at all, which would be a shame because post-implementation, the government did look at the savings. That estimate is around $9 billion per year. Not bad, eh?

And that’s just the start of the episode. We also discuss boxes of Orange Juice’s documents…

What does the title have to do with any of the above? Listen and find out!