Regulation Nation
“Our economy is not a zero-sum game. Regulations do have costs; often, as a country, we have to make tough decisions about whether those costs are necessary.”
—President Obama, Wall Street Journal op-ed, January 18, 2011
The President’s policies have failed and are making the economy worse. Because the President cannot stand on his record, he has regrettably turned to the politics of envy and division. House Republicans have a Plan for America’s Job Creators—it’s time for the President and Senate Democrats to stop blocking our bipartisan jobs bills.
Last week, the Heritage Foundation released a comprehensive review of regulations under the Obama administration. The report, Red Tape Rising: Obama-Era Regulation at the Three-Year Mark, highlights a number of useful data points, making the case that President Obama’s regulatory web-spinning continues to ensnare more and more job creators.
Despite the occasional rhetoric (see op-ed above from 427 days ago), there is no sign of a reversing trend in federal rulemaking with hundreds of rules yet to be written under Democrats’ permanent bailout of Wall Street law and the federal government takeover of health care.
Below are some selected statistics from the report:
- “During the three years of the Obama Administration, a total of 106 new major regulations have been imposed at a cost of more than $46 billion annually, and nearly $11 billion in one-time implementation costs. This amount is about five times the cost imposed by the prior Administration of George W. Bush.”
- “According to Heritage Foundation calculations using [a Government Accountability Office] database, the George W. Bush Administration adopted 28 major regulations in its first three years, barely a quarter of the 106 imposed by the Obama Administration during its first three years. In terms of cost, the gap was even wider, with the Bush Administration imposing $8.1 billion in new annual regulatory costs compared to the $46 billion imposed during the Obama years to date, a five-to-one ratio.”
- “According to business consultancy Davis Polk, 225 Dodd–Frank rulemaking deadlines have passed. Of these, 164—more than seven of 10—have been missed. Regulators have not yet even released proposals for 24 of the 164 missed rules.”
- “In the past decade, the number of economically significant rules in the [Unified Agenda—the Office of Management and Budget’s semiannual regulatory report] has increased by more than 137 percent, rising from 56 in spring 2001 to 133 in fall 2011.”
- “Of the four major actions in 2011 that reduced regulatory burdens, none were the product of [the president's] regulatory review initiative. Three—involving air cargo screening, family investment advisors, and debit-card price controls—were modifications of recently imposed regulatory burdens. The fourth, the exemption of milk from ‘oil spill’ regulations, was highlighted in the President’s State of the Union speech as an example of the success of the review. In reality, it had been proposed by the EPA in January 2009, and put on hold when the Obama Administration came into office.”
- “Despite the weak economy, the Obama Administration continued to increase the regulatory burden on Americans in 2011, adding 32 major regulations that increase regulatory burdens, almost $10 billion in annual costs, and $6.6 billion in one-time implementation costs.”
For additional information, contact:
The House Republican Conference Policy Office
