Chevron Exposes Leftist Totalitarianism

By Sam Stone

The left’s freakout over the Supreme Court decision to toss the “Chevron Deference” doctrine is an admission of their failure to govern democratically, and the unpopularity of the agenda they’ve been advancing. There’s a reason modern Democratic campaigns are built on generically amicable sounding statements and vicious, mostly unfounded, attacks on their opponents: they have nothing else they can sell. 

The last legitimately popular policy platform national democrats aligned behind was the effort to expand healthcare coverage to every U.S. resident. Obamacare passed in 2010, and should be recognized as a modest success as it increased the percentage of the U.S. population with health insurance from 84% in 2010 to 92% today; albeit with plans that include dramatically higher out-of-pocket costs for most patients, along with less choice and personalization of care. Since that modest success, however, Democrat policies have been notable mainly for their staggering ineffectiveness and ability to make solvable problems intractable. In the ensuing years, Democrats have enabled and expanded chronic street homelessness, driven energy costs through the roof with miniscule reductions in greenhouse gas outputs, made home-buying unaffordable for working-class families, thrown the border wide open, and turned inner cities into a 365 days-a-year airing of The Purge. 

None of the individual policies behind these programs would have passed at the ballot, even in the most liberal states. That’s why, in 2013, Democrats led by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada eliminated the 60-vote requirement for the Senate to confirm Cabinet appointments and judicial nominees. That allowed the left to fill hundreds of court vacancies with left-wing judicial activists who could forward the Democrat agenda under the umbrella of the courts rather than forcing the left to court public opinion for their ideas. Chevron Deference was at the heart of this strategy. 

The original Supreme Court decision in 1984 basically said that absent specific legislative guidance, government agencies could interpret, adapt, and expand rule-making on an “expert basis”, and greatly limited any challenge to the decisions of those agencies in court. In fact, it went so far as to allow government agencies to create their own, internal, alternative legal systems to adjudicate their decisions. Chevron Deference, in essence, made government agencies the judge, jury, and executioner of their own agenda. Agencies could, and did, target people and businesses for breaking rules, rewrite those rules in the middle of the case to ensure the accused individual or entity really was breaking them, and then punish them in virtually any way they saw fit. 

The only hangup to this massive expansion of bureaucratic power was the courts and a dying bureaucratic ethos of political neutrality. Hence, in the wake of Reid’s annihilation of Senatorial norms, President Obama backed Reid’s power grab by stuffing federal agencies at every level with left-wing political operatives: the type of people who previously would have only served in appointed (temporary) positions under one administration were now layered throughout the management level in every federal bureaucracy, particularly in hiring positions where they could ensure incoming bureaucrats shared their politics and passion for overwhelming government control. The results have been predictable, and hugely damaging to the democratic norms of the country. 

Over the ensuing 20 years, agencies have run amok with new rules; many of which make little sense in the real world. My home state of Arizona, for instance, is staring down the barrel of new EPA rules limiting airborne particulate matter. Limiting airborne particulates is a noble goal, but not when that goal is physically unachievable. Arizona is mostly desert, which means every time the wind blows, there’s dust in the air – particulate matter, in EPA parlance. Arizona is also in the global jet stream from China, which means we also get a heavy dose of Chinese air pollution. Combined, these two factors make it impossible for Arizona to meet the proposed new standards. We’re not suddenly going to turn into a rain forest, and China isn’t going to shut down their coal plants. What would the new rules mean? Massive new restrictions on Arizona farmers, ranchers, and businesses. Higher taxes. Limits on development. And a lot of newly hired EPA bureaucrats to enforce it all. None of that would change the air quality for the better, but it would increase government power and control. The same can be said of new rules promulgated in virtually every federal agency.

If these rules were popular and effective, Democrats could easily legislate them – but they can’t do that, because the vast majority of government rule-making since Reid’s power play are deeply unpopular and, at best, marginally effective. Campaign calls to protect democracy aside, when Democrats can’t get their way democratically, they are perfectly happy to toss democratic norms to the curb and institute their ideas unilaterally. SCOTUS tossing Chevron Deference puts the left’s entire agenda at risk, both of future stonewalling by voters who don’t subscribe to the Ivy League vision of bureaucratic world dominance, and a rollback of existing policies via lawsuits from commercial entities seeking to free themselves from counterproductive and ineffective regulations promulgated over the last twenty years. 

Now ask yourself these questions: 

• Are you or this country better off today than 20 years ago? 

• Are people happier and more prosperous? 

• Are our cities safer, our streets, air and water cleaner? 

• Is the economy better?

• Are you paying more taxes?

• Is the government prying further into your everyday life?

• Have the politics and character of the country improved?

If you can’t answer “Yes” to the first four questions and “No” to the last three, the post-Reid, Chevron-revved era of bureaucratic “expert” governance should be viewed as a failure, and the return to a pre-Reid era of democratic governance embraced. 

Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Sam Stone only and not his co-host Chuck Warren or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.