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America’s Powerful Administrative State Would Be Unrecognizable to the Founders
By U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) 
August 24, 2021 
Washington Times 
 
After all, President Biden placed partisan bureaucrats who sympathize with the Marxist ideology of the Cuban regime in key government positions. These unelected bureaucrats, who glorify the regime in Cuba, are the ones responsible for the Biden administration’s policy toward Cuba. They would rather cater to Marxists in the Democratic Party’s base than help the Cuban people’s demand for freedom.
 
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How did we get to the point where unelected bureaucrats you’ve never heard of are deciding important policies, such as engagement with an authoritarian regime murdering peaceful protesters 90 miles from our shores?
 
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Our Founders didn’t plan it this way. Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution states, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” They understood the necessity for governmental agencies to administer government, and they established a structure for the implementation of law.
 
But the power that unelected bureaucrats wield in the federal government today would be unrecognizable to the Framers. Instead of being created by the Framers, the administrative state as we know it owes its origins to President Woodrow Wilson. Rather than self-governance or republican virtue, the defining principle of his presidency was administrative efficiency.
 
A political “scientist” by trade, Mr. Wilson believed that well-trained, competent elites could govern America and avoid the delay and inconveniences of democratic accountability. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal doubled down on that mindset, giving birth to a sprawling federal bureaucracy with substantial authority to operate in a legislative-like way through federal rulemaking.
 
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Fortunately, conservatives can push back against the administrative state and this century-old imbalance. After President Trump cut through the red tape, the approval time for major infrastructure projects dropped from more than a decade to just two years. America achieved energy independence. When the pandemic hit, regulations on manufacturers were slashed, allowing the U.S. to quickly produce ventilators and other medical equipment. 
 
But those changes were fleeting. Mr. Biden is now giving haven to the bureaucrat elites and their administrative morass. That means more power handed to unelected and faceless regulators and so-called experts. That means more power to people such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. That means more power to the radical Marxists pushing critical race theory in our schools, and more power to bureaucrats who hate the Second Amendment.
 
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It is time to reclaim our country from the unelected bureaucracy of the administrative state.
 
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We need lawmakers who understand the consequences of an all-powerful, unaccountable bureaucracy and who support reforming the current administrative state. All too often, these so-called elites end up on the wrong side of history. Our goal must be reclaiming the ideal of a government of, by, and for the people, not a nation serving unelected aristocratic elites in Washington.
 
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