From the excellent new book, What Government Gets Wrong: The Unelected Officials Who Actually Run Government:
"Simply comparing the total volume of congressional output with the gross bureaucratic product provides a rough indication of where lawmaking now occurs in the federal government. The 106th Congress (1999â"2000) was among the most active in recent years. It passed 580 pieces of legislation, 200 more than the 105th Congress and nearly twice as many as the 104th. Some, like campaign finance reform, seemed quite significant, but many pieces of legislation were minor. During the same two years, executive agencies produced 157,173 pages of new rules and regulations in the official Federal Register, roughly the average number for recent years."
We still elect politicians, but they no longer run the country.