The Federalist Society: 'A Federal Sunset Law'

Source:The Federalist Society- Professor William Eskridge: Yale Law School.

"In the years since the New Deal and the Great Society, a huge number of federal statutes have been enacted into law and have become permanent fixtures of American life.  Repealing these statutes is politically impossible because one needs a majority of the House of Representatives, sixty votes in the Senate, and the President's signature to repeal a law.  The cumbersome mechanisms of bicameralism, the Senate filibuster, and the President's veto, which were meant to ensure limited government, now serve the wholly different purpose of entrenching big government by making federal laws immortal.  This panel will consider whether Congress should pass a general federal sunset law that would require that most federal statutes sunset after ten or twenty years unless they are re-enacted by the two Houses of Congress together with the President.  Arguably, such a law would return us to the Framers' vision where small government was entrenched instead of big government being entrenched.  Many states have adopted sunset laws, and maybe now it is time for the federal government to follow their good example.  Thomas Jefferson once proposed that even the Constitution itself should sunset every 20 years -- an idea that James Madison wisely rejected.  But even if the Constitution ought not to sunset and even if a few landmark laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ought not to sunset, surely most federal laws ought to be periodically in need of being reenacted.  This panel will examine that question.This panel was featured as Showcase Panel IV at the 2011 National Lawyers Convention on November 12, 2011." 

From The Federalist Society

Our Founding Fathers (our Founding Liberals) deliberately designed a governmental system and Federal Government to make it difficult for them to pass laws. And more difficult to make the Federal Government more powerful and intrusive, with things like the the three co-equal branches, executive, that carries out laws and can propose them. 

Congress that writes laws and oversees the other two branches including themselves. The Judicial Branch that obviously decides cases in the criminal and civil justice system. And sometimes passes on cases as well as ruling on the constitutionality of laws that the executive and legislative passes. And of course forcing the executive and legislative branches to work together to pass new laws. 

This is what checks and balances are about to make it difficult to pass laws and even harder to pass laws. Because even if one party controls both the White House and Congress, if the opposition party has enough Senate seats, they can block legislation that the Senate majority party is trying to pass. And even if one party controls both the Administration and Congress, to amend our Constitution, that takes a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress, as well as 67 states to pass and amend the Constitution.