On my way down the driveway to retrieve last Sunday’s newspaper, I happened to glance at the half-dozen or so houses in my immediate neighborhood. Most are owned by honest, hard-working middle class families who put untold hours into the upkeep of their properties.
Then, it struck me … most of these decent people had, at one time or another, hired local kids to mow their lawns, rake their leaves, shovel their driveways, or baby-sit for their youngsters. Others have even employed occasional help for household cleaning chores. I also suspect some of my neighbors may have paid certain of those individuals more than $50.00 during some three month periods … without withholding, matching and paying social security and Medicare taxes.
In what kind of a wanton neighborhood had I raised my children?
If all this seems a little silly, well … it is! However, the furor surrounding a number of President Clinton’s recent Cabinet nominees and appointees has brought to light two serious issues.
First, there are literally thousands of annoying, unnecessary and unenforceable laws on the books … in this case, IRS regulations relative to payroll taxes which must be withheld, matched and paid on household help, not to mention the submission of several forms on which all this activity must be duly reported. Ask the IRS and they’ll tell you just how simple and easy they’ve made the system. If the public has a different perspective … tough, the “government doesn’t agree”.
In fairness, if the intent was to provide social security coverage to so-called domestic help, then one can presume the law’s sponsors had a noble purpose. Cynics, however, might suspect the government was merely looking for yet another untapped source of revenue.
Meantime, accepting the “confessions” of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and others, both in and out of the Clinton Administration (did you notice not one member of Congress has fessed up … yet), raises a second issue. If some of the nation’s highest paid lawyers, judges and lobbyists have been so utterly ignorant of such laws, how on earth can the average citizen be expected to know of this or thousands of other laws and regulations governing and restricting their lives which are routinely enacted by federal, state, county and local governments each year?
Yet, in court, ignorance of the law is no defense!
As with the generally ignored household withholding requirements, billions of dollars in minor cash transactions passing through the nation’s “underground economy” go unreported each year. Where unpopular and relatively unenforceable laws are concerned, the public simply doesn’t give a damn!
In a nation where our general civil order is effectively dependent on voluntary compliance by most of its citizens, respect for both the rule of law and belief in the validity of individual laws themselves is paramount. We should not, as is the case today, encourage a system wherein people have contempt for many of our laws, selectively obeying only those ones they personally view as reasonable and for which they’re not likely to be caught if violated.
In his effort to streamline the federal government and reduce the budget deficit, President Clinton might seriously consider eliminating vast numbers of unpopular and relatively unenforceable regulations, insofar as such actions will not limit the rights of any citizens. Not only will Americans relish the dawn of an era of less intrusive government, they are apt to develop a higher regard for our legal system and may benefit from the elimination of massive bureaucracies which have emerged to administer and enforce those cancelled laws.
