During the Corona mania, the Centers for Disease control implemented a contact tracing order 86 FR 61246, which is still in effect today. This order expanded the jurisdiction of the CDC, granting them the power to obtain detailed information about people entering the U.S. by passenger aircraft. The information collected by the CDC is redundant to the information already collected by immigration. It represents an unnecessary expansion of the CDC’s powers and granted them access to personal information. While most countries around the world have repealed their corona era measures, including contact tracing, the U.S. still maintains this policy.
The need to repeal such an order indicates there may be a greater concern than this isolated issue.
I would suggest taking this a step further and petition that any policy/order put in place due to an emergency declaration will expire in a set period time (short term such as 30 days), unless reapproved. I would also propose that any policy put in place due to an emergency declaration expire on the date the proclaimed emergency ends.
In this case, the contact tracing order and any other orders related to the pandemic would have to be approved every 30 days, and would become void on 11-8-2021 when the pandemic was officially ended if they were still in effect at that time. This would offer safeguards for any future orders put into effect during emergencies. If an order is to be made permanent it should be reviewed and approved based on its own merit outside the need for emergency provision.
Also, this order appears to be issued by the CDC. Does the CDC currently have authority to issue orders like this without approval from our elected representatives or president? It may be wise to consider additional safeguards to ensure than no single government agency can issue orders in perpetuity without review and approval by elected representatives. Checks and balances.
But nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program . -Milton Friedman
Your proposal makes sense and would definitely help to systemically address a lot of government overreach. I chose to word my proposal with a more limited scope, because this is an agency issued order, and I’m hoping the new administration will fix it on day-one.
Does the CDC currently have authority to issue orders like this without approval from our elected representatives or president?
The CDC claims the authority to issue the order, under 42 U.S.C. § 264 and § 268, which provide congressional authority, and 42 C.F.R. § 71.4, § 71.20, § 71.31, and § 71.32, which provide executive authority. So, yes, it would seem that they have this authority.
In general, there are a lot of laws that blur the separation of powers and grant legislative authority to the executive branch, and most people, including law makers and judges, have reinterpreted the commerce clause from imposing a duty to ensure that commerce proceeds regularly and without interruption to the federal government has the right to advance any rule, as long as it has the word “regulation” in the heading.
From a historical perspective, this rule is likely unprecedented in terms of scope, as it applies to every commercial flight without any sunset date. The powers the CDC cited were likely used in a much more targeted way against specific countries or flights, while they had an elevated threat of spreading infectious disease.