WASHINGTON, DC — Increasing use of judgeless subpoenas by federal bureaucrats to collect Americans’ private records is “definitely” a problem Congress needs to address, 2016 Republican presidential candidate [crscore]Rand Paul[/crscore] told Daily Caller News Foundation editors and reporters Tuesday.
“We have way too many administrative subpoenas, and I think it’s a symptom of government growing too large and too invasive,” says Paul, a Republican who is also seeking re-election as Kentucky’s junior senator. “I don’t have specific legislation on the administrative subpoenas, but we have very much advocated against giving more power to regulatory agencies.”
Individuals and businesses targeted by federal officials with administrative subpoenas can fight them in court, but most don’t because the legal costs are burdensome, courts generally defer to agencies, and agencies can use other measures to retaliate against individuals and business owners who oppose them.
“The bullying aspect comes from the subpoena power, which I am definitely opposed to,” Paul says.
Judgeless subpoena powers are part of the broader police powers agencies shouldn’t possess, but do, he says.
“I always say the executive is 1,000 times more powerful than Congress now, and some of it is subpoenas, some of it is SWAT teams,” Paul says. “The Department of Agriculture has a SWAT team. The Department of Education has a SWAT team. If you read the Washington Post, they’ll say I’m making this up, it’s not true, because they don’t call it a SWAT team.
“But they do wear helmets, body armor and carry automatic weapons, but they aren’t called a SWAT team. But 48 agencies have them. The IRS has it, Fish and Wildlife has it. To me, it’s absurd that we have given so much power.”
But agencies can’t enforce laws that don’t exist, Paul says, citing over-criminalization in America as one root problem leading to judgeless subpoenas.
“The other thing is, they have administrative subpoenas because we’ve made everything a crime,” Paul says. “… There are four crimes in the Constitution. But really, the federal government wasn’t supposed to be involved in a crime at all, unless something happened between the states basically to where (it affected) the exterior of the country, something international. But we now have so many crimes that nobody can count them up, as far as federal crimes.”
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