Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.
At least one member of Congress is trying to do something about the smothering web of laws, rules, and regulations that make even the most honest of people into criminals.
Texas Rep Chip Roy (R) has introduced legislation called the “Count the Crimes to Cut Act.” According to Roy’s office, Congress should be “particularly concerned with criminalization at the federal level.”
As was said by one law professor, there is probably no one over the age of 18 in the United States who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.
Task forces and experts charged with looking into this topic cannot even agree on the number of federal crimes on the books. On average, Congress creates more than 500 new crimes per decade and federal agencies create hundreds more through regulations. Some have not been used to charge anyone in over 30 years.
Roy’s bill would require the Attorney General and federal agency heads to report on exactly how many federal criminal laws are on the books, what the penalties are, and how many people have been prosecuted.
With that data in hand, Roy would then ask Congress to repeal criminal laws that aren’t used, are poorly written, or simply out of date.
Good. The federal criminal code is long overdue for a thorough cleaning.
Image Credit: By Jamelle Bouie [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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It’s a start and it has been overlooked far too long. This should breeze through both houses and be on President Trump’s desk by the end of next month, Our federal government needs fixing and this move will put some definite areas to start with, the laws.
We need a statutory limit to the size of both the Civil and Criminal Codes.
If they want to make new laws, then they have to find an old law to sunset and get off the books.
Make the size determination by a formula that uses the population of Citizens, and only Citizens a part of the formula so that the Codes may only increase in word count proportional to the growth of population.
The craziest of all is pot as a schedule 1 drug. And alcohol is supported by government, especially where it is produced when it is very much worse, both socially and health wise, than pot. The government is afraid they will lose out on alcohol tax money and pot taxes will not work out as pot is a plant that will grow in most people’s yard. The alcohol industry is quite strong and will not stand for pot to compete with them. So people go needlessly to prison over pot and have their lives ruined for no good reason.
I’ve thought about this for a long time, at least 1/4 of each Congressional session should be devoted to undoing old laws that are redundant, unnecessary, overbearing or just plain stupid. Same should happen in states government.
what does this have to do with the current situation regarding the lawlessness on the streets – looting, break-ins, and arson, and lack of support for police to shut it down. instead, there are cries to defund police! sorry, but you are addressing something that has little to do with the current situation.