Good luck deconstructing the administrative state

Presidential adviser Steve Bannon has made a bold vow: “Deconstruction of the administrative state.” Achieving the goal in four or even eight years is an iridescent dream because it would require the uprooting of a 130-year-old complex of institutions, practices and statutes that no Congress — however partisan — would agree to.

The origins of the government bureaucracy can be found in the tumultuous period after the Civil War. Encouraged by government gifts of public land, the railroads provided more than passenger service; they were the means by which farmers got their crops and livestock to market. Farmers didn’t have much choice of carriers. And railroads charged “whatever the freight would bear.” The states attempted to regulate the railroads, but their jurisdiction ended at the state line, and all of the major farm-to-market railroads were interstate.

Succumbing to pressure, Congress in 1887 enacted the Interstate Commerce Act. In doing so, lawmakers did something unprecedented: They took a sliver of legislative power granted to Congress under the Constitution and conferred it on an agency of its own creation, the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Could Congress have tackled the job of regulating the railroads without creating the commission? It could, if its members knew anything about railroads, such as what constituted a fair return for the railroads and what was a just rate for shippers to pay.

The commission stood alone until 1906, when another regula- tory agency was created again in response to public pressure. The Food and Drug Administration was founded amid popular revulsion at the lack of sanitary controls in the meat packinghouses. The FDA was also empowered to police over-the-counter remedies that were often bogus concoctions of alcohol and food coloring.

The same logic that lay behind the creation of the commerce commission persuaded Congress to set up the FDA: House members and senators were illequipped to go snooping around pharmacies and slaughterhouses.

President Franklin Roosevelt unleashed new regulatory agencies, ranging from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the National Labor Relations Board. The Democratic Party came to be identified with the use of regulatory agencies, which has caused critics on the right to crusade for their abolition.

Agencies are occasionally merged or even abolished. The commerce commission, which started it all, was cut in 1996. But such outright eliminations are rare because agencies develop constituencies of supporters in the public, in Congress and in the industries they regulate.

Abolition of the agencies is probably beyond Bannon’s power, but they can be crippled simply by failing to fill vacancies or drastically cutting budgets.

Bear in mind, however, that while people might want government to get off their backs, eventually they will demand to be remounted.