Editorial: Badly Written Bad Rules

An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal is also worth looking at. This editorial highlights some of sheer stupidity that passes for government "work" and "effort" these days.

Then there's the Affordable Care Act. Christopher Conover and Jerry Ellig of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a trio of forthcoming papers, systematically examine every rule issued to date to create the new health-care entitlement.

They conclude that "the federal government used a fast-track process of regulatory analysis that failed to comply with its own standards, and produced poorly substantiated claims about the ACA's benefits and costs"—including an upward bias for benefits, a downward bias for costs, and numerous material omissions. Little wonder for a law that contains the phrase "the Secretary shall" 1,563 times. 

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Mr. Obama has made clear that the rules will keep coming, but at least his team could try to write good bad rules. Probably too much to ask.

If you think you're getting your money's worth from any chamber of your government, please let me know.