Some members of Congress are appalled by the reams of regulations issued each year by swarms of unelected federal bureaucrats. Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.) are two of those, and in June they reintroduced their Congressional Responsibility Act -- which would require Congress to approve major agency rules and regulations before they become binding.

• While Congress passed and the president signed into law 241 bills last year, federal agencies issued 4,899 rules and regulations -- 315 more than the previous year and the second greatest number since 1984.

• At 68,591 pages, last year's Federal Register -- the depository of federal regulations -- attained heights not seen since the Carter administration.

• Requiring spending of more than $700 billion annually, off-budget regulatory costs are now well more than one- third the level of the entire 1998 federal budget of $1.6 trillion -- and they rival corporate pre-tax profits of $734 billion.

• Yet in the Office of Management and Budget's 1998 Report to Congress on regulatory costs and benefits, less than 1 percent of agency final rule documents were reviewed -- a clear indication, critics say, that the federal government has no idea whether benefits exceed costs.

Source: Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. (Competitive Enterprise Institute), "Tyranny of the Unelected Regulators," Washington Times, August 8, 1999.