Beginning of the End

Stephen Hayward, Powerline:

The Daily Chart: When Did the Reg Revolution Really Begin?

Conservatives like to point to the Progressive Era for the turn in constitutional philosophy that paved the way for the administrative state that then got into business during the New Deal. Though this is account is true, it is not complete. As the chart below of Federal Register pages—a rough measure of bureaucratic and regulatory activity—shows, the administrative state doesn’t really reach escape velocity until the 1970s, under Presidents Nixon and Ford unfortunately. And the kind of regulation that began in the 1970s was of a different and more ominous character than New Deal-era regulation, but that is a long story for another day.