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Too many commandments from too far away

Article V can break D.C.'s commandments.

You’ve no doubt heard of a little set of guidelines called the Ten Commandments.

But have you heard of the “Ten Thousand Commandments”?

It’s the clever title of an annual report issued by the Competitive Enterprise Institute that offers the gory details about the costs of thousands and thousands of nonsensical regulations and rules issued from Washington, D.C. – including how the debt (now at over $37 trillion and climbing) contributes to regulatory loads.

Among the lowlights from the 2025 report:

* U.S. households pay an average of $16,016 each year in a hidden regulatory tax, which consumes 16 percent of income and 21 percent of household expenses.
* The total compliance costs and economic effects of federal regulation are at least an estimated $2.155 trillion annually, and almost certainly higher. Last year’s total was $2.117 trillion.
* If it were a country, U.S. regulation would rank as the world’s eighth-largest economy, slotted behind the Russian Federation and ahead of Canada.
* The 10.5 billion hours that the federal government says it took to complete federal paperwork in 2023, according to the Information Collection Budget, roughly translate to 14,983 human lifetimes.
* Federal agencies issued 3,248 new final regulations in 2024. President Donald Trump’s total of 2,964 new final regulations in 2019 is the lowest on record.
* //The Federal Register// containing those rules surged to 106,109 pages, the highest tally on record and a 19 percent rise over 2023.
* Congress enacted 175 laws in calendar year 2024, meaning that agencies issued 19 rules for every law enacted by Congress.

Read it all if you need your hair curled.

While the latest edition of “Ten Thousand Commandments” is depressing and enraging, the expansion of the federal government and the ever-widening distance between it and us is nothing new.

One of the more absurd examples of unchecked federal power given to the unelected in recent history came amid the deluge also known as Obamacare (formally and laughably known as the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”).

In a brief show of backbone, Congress eliminated provisions for the infamous “death panels” that were included in the bill. But then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius reinstated them. How and why?

Well, Philip Klein of The American Spectator tallied 700 references in the law stating that the Secretary “shall”, 200 to the Secretary “may”, and 139 to the Secretary “determines.”

Riffing off of that, the great Mark Steyn in his book //After America// noted that, among the shalls and mays and determines was a directive that the Secretary “shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance.”

As Steyn wrote: “‘Tooth-level surveillance’: from colonial subjects to dentured servants in a mere quarter-millennium.”

While the Trump administration is doing what it can to freeze or eliminate such insane regulation, micromanagement, and power-grabbing, keep in mind that President Trump did the same during his first term.

Then Joe Biden ambled into the White House and wiped it all out with executive orders – particularly an order with the Orwellian title “Modernizing Regulatory Review.”

In short, that executive order increased a subset of regulatory rules with economic effects of $100 million or more as “economically significant” to $200 million.

Trump revoked “Modernizing Regulatory Review” this year and restored the $100 million mark.

But is this Executive Order tennis match any way to govern?

Any president or administration can reinstitute tooth-level surveillance and millions of dollars in “limits”. This does not resemble limited republican government in any way, shape, or form. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, the accumulation of regulations and rules by a distant capital over a supposedly freeborn people

“…covers the surface of society with a network of small and complicated rules…The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power…compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

There is a way to combat federal overreach and make the necessary structural changes that will eliminate it: a limited-purpose Article V convention that will discuss and propose amendments to the Constitution that will:

* Impose fiscal restraints on the federal government.
* Limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.
* Impose term limits on federal officials, including members of Congress

Do you think that the bureaucrats and lobbyists running around D.C. inserting and implementing the maze of ridiculous rules and regulations give you a second thought? Do you think they care about the work and toil you put in to pay for all of this?

Do you think that they know your name?

Sign the petition below to demonstrate your support for an Article V convention that will reestablish the principle that when it comes to this representative republic, the commandments come from the people.

Join the fight to break D.C.'s ten thousand commandments for good.

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Created:	2025-07-31 16:57 GMT
Updated:	2025-08-11 07:00 GMT
Published:	2025-08-04 17:06 GMT
Converted:	2025-11-11 12:06 GMT
Change Author:	Matt May
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