This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The headline on this blog is similar to one that appeared on a commentary by Hugh Hewitt that ran in the Washington Post last weekend.

In a few words, it makes the contention that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on environmental protection really was about more than just that  general issue.  It was about the balance of power between administrative agencies and Congress in this country.

The court’s decision resides with requiring legislators to make decisions about how far administrative agencies can go in regulating public actions.  The gut-level conclusion:  Agencies cannot take aggressive action on their own, such as was the case with the Environment Protection Agency, without specific legislative action to back up the action.

Columnist Hewitt made the point in these lead paragraphs:

“The formal adoption of the ‘major questions doctrine’ by a solid six-justice majority in West Virginia v. EPA on June 30 was covered by the media as primarily, if not exclusively, a blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations to combat global climate change.

“The news coverage largely missed the decision’s true significance.  That’s understandable.  Most journalists are not familiar with the far-reaching tentacles of the federal administrative state.  The court’s ruling certainly was a setback for the ‘pen and phone’ brigade of progressives who believe a progressive president ought to be able to use phone or e-mail to order Executive Branch agencies to do whatever he or she determines is necessary and proper.

“But that’s not how the Constitution spells it out:  Ours is a Constitution-bound government, whose powers are enumerated by that document.”

Hewitt added:  “Administrative agencies established by the Congress have been put on notice by the Supreme Court not to take action on controversies or issues — no matter how pressing those issues are believed to be — unless first given direction by Congress on the ‘major questions’ the agency would like to answer in whole or part by regulation.”

Put another way, federal bureaucrats cannot do what they have been doing for several years – acting on their own because they think they know best.

In the Wall Street Journal, columnist Kimberley Strassel adds this:

“Sweep away the opinion’s numbing technical descriptions, and the ruling is a joy to read.  The six conservatives on the court, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, have officially declared the ‘major questions doctrine’—a concept that has appeared in a handful of past court decisions—to be a living, breathing principle.  The federal bureaucracy is no longer allowed to impose programs of major ‘economic and political significance’ on the country absent ‘clear congressional authorization.’ Hallelujah.”

In the court case, Roberts used, as Hewitt put it, “a stiletto of a single sentence to gut the overreaching ambitions of federal agencies everywhere, not just the EPA’s overreach.”

“About the EPA’s attempt to invent the provenance for its climate change regulations, — ‘There is little reason to think Congress assigned such decisions to the Agency.’”  

All of this could apply, for example, to the Federal Trade Commission and its regulations of “Big Tech’s” data-collection practices, and for any agency seeking to control what Congress has not explicitly given it authority to control.  

Hewitt concludes:  “The unelected and unaccountable have been grabbing power for decades.  More such hacking back of the overgrowth cannot arrive soon enough.  The federal circuit and district courts will read this decision and get to work.  Good.  Hurry.”

As a lobbyist over about 25 years in Oregon, I frequently encountered aggressive attempts by unelected bureaucrats to go beyond the law, especially in health care and environmental issues.  They thought they knew better than those elected to make such decisions.

It bothered me then.  It bothered my clients.  And, it bothers me today as I reflect back on those occasions.

Good for the Supreme Court to underline the distinction.