Entrepreneur and politician Vivek Ramaswamy criticized federal bureaucracy in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday. He argued that many laws are not passed by Congress but instead created by unelected officials, stating:

Yes, we are a nation of laws. But we have too many laws, and most of them were never passed by Congress but were instead enacted as federal ‘rules’ by unelected bureaucrats. Dismantling that bureaucracy shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

He referenced the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), created in 1938 by President Franklin Roosevelt, which regulated airline competition, prices, and routes. Ramaswamy pointed out that no new airlines launched during the CAB’s 40 years due to what he called regulatory capture. In the 1970s, President Gerald Ford began efforts to reduce the CAB’s power, supported by Democratic leaders like Sen. Ted Kennedy and President Jimmy Carter. In 1978, Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill abolishing the CAB, marking a bipartisan success.

Ramaswamy cited Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s book, noting that airfares dropped by 40 percent between 1978 and 2011, making air travel more accessible to Americans. He stressed the importance of dismantling the regulatory state for economic growth, saying:

Prosperity is unifying, and the path back to it requires shutting down the regulatory state.

He also referenced Ronald Reagan’s observation that federal agencies are “the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”