Administrative Discretion Quotes

Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.

When George W. Bush decided to save the American position in Iraq by going against the advice of all of his wise men, of Jim Baker and the whole Iraq Study Group, and 90% of his administration, that was George W. Bush's decision. So we have to bear in mind that this isn't an administration we're electing. It's a person that we are electing.

Freedom is whatever the president says it is, pending revision.

The Civil Service is a bit like a rusty weathercock. It moves with opinion then it stays where it is until another wind moves it in a different direction

Presidents cannot be constrained by administrative flowcharts.

The SEC and CFTC are expert agencies blessed with immensely capable professionals. Judges value and defer to that expertise - when it's exercised to make the hard decisions that Congress entrusts to an agency.

I generally leave the details of fiscal programs to the Administration and Congress. That's really their area of authority and responsibility, and I don't think it's appropriate for me to second guess.

The office is there, ready to be molded by the occupant. I don’t think the structure is ever anything permanent. What is gained by one president can be lost, voluntarily or not, by the next.

The line has not been exactly drawn which separates those important subjects, which must be entirely regulated by the legislature itself, from those of less interest, in which … power may be given to those who are to act under such general provisions to fill up the details.

The administrative process is, in essence, our generation’s answer to the inadequacy of the judicial and legislative processes. It represents our efforts to find an answer to those inadequacies by some other method than merely increasing executive power.

We're not going to let some unelected bureaucrats in Washington stop us from moving forward with our agenda, but at the end of the day, CBO is not the Holy Grail.

[Impoundment has become] a means whereby the White House can give effect to social goals of its own choosing by reallocating national resources in contravention of congressional dictates.

The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if there is evidence both ways, is a power of enormous consequence. An unscrupulous administrator might be tempted to say "Let me find the facts for the people of my country, and I care little who lays down the general principles."

Modern administrative government springs from the inadequacy of a simple tripartite form of government to deal with modern problems …. It vests the necessary powers with the administrative authority it creates, not too greatly concerned with the extent to which such action does violence to the traditional tripartite theory of government organization.

We really must keep under control, and pretty strict control, the area within which 'The Man in Whitehall' knows best.

Those people.... early stricken of God, intellectually - the departmental interpreters of the laws in Washington... can always be depended on to take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it.

Paymasters come in only two sizes: one sort shows you where the book says that you can't have what you've got coming to you; the second sort digs through the book until he finds a paragraph that lets you have what you need even if you don't rate it.

…if I should once permit such political considerations to interfere with the administration of justice in this office, where could I stop? If I should once begin to allow my official conduct to be swayed by considerations such as those, I feel it would end by eventually leading me wholly astray.

There is no reason why EPA's role should ebb and flow based on a particular administration or a particular administrator.

The reorganization of the Defense Department under Mr. McNamara was something [in] which Mr. McNamara went beyond the law and the intent of Congress, far beyond it, though he did not break the law. He stayed within the law …

We think the administration can give us a lot of regulatory flexibility which will bring more insurers in the marketplace, which means more competition, more choice which drives down costs, so that discretion can work in a good way or it could work in a bad way.

Under this law (Controlled Substances Act) a bureaucrat-usually not elected-decides whether or not a substance is dangerous and how dangerous that substance is. There's no more messing around with legislatures, presidents, or other bothersome formalities. When MDMA (ecstasy) was made illegal in 1986, no elected official voted on that. It was done "in house." People are now in jail because they did something that an administrator declared was wrong.

In many fields of the administration of interventionist measures, favoritism simply cannot be avoided.