An Excellent Point

In my capacity as President of the Phoenix Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, a little over a year ago we hosted Denver Post columnist and author David Harsanyi.

On Christmas Eve, David's column "Lassez-faire punditry" provided some excellent insights and thoughts regarding the current economic situation and the (IMHO) laughable claims of some (notably Ariana Huffington) that this economic situation is an indictment of the free market system. As Harsanyi documents, recent years have not by any means been years in which our economic system has been "free market":

The Federal Register, a list of regulations, reached an all-time high of nearly 79,000 regulations, up from nearly 64,000 in 2001. New regulations have mounted rather than diminished under the Bush administration.

Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, has studied regulatory spending and effectively squashed the "deregulation" mythology that is extensively peddled these days.

"Between fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2009," she writes, "outlays on regulatory activities, adjusted for inflation, increased from $26.4 billion to an estimated $42.7 billion, or 62 percent. By contrast, President Clinton increased real spending on regulatory activities by 31 percent, from $20.1 billion in 1993 to $26.4 billion in 2001."

De Rugy also points out that adjusted for inflation, regulatory spending under the category of finance and banking were cut by 3 percent under Bill Clinton and rose 29 percent under the imagined Bush deregulation binge.

Where are all the tributes to the laissez-faire economic boom of 1991-2000?

Instead, the far left has taken up concerted scare-mongering — much like they accuse the right of employing after 9/11 — to transform a short-term economic crisis into a radical long-term foundational alteration of our economy.

It's a great piece, and if you haven't encountered Harsanyi before then I highly recommend his book, "Nanny State."