Obama’s Massive Regulatory Agenda

At the federal level, the biggest costs from from vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, which cost consumers $55 billion a year, and the requirement to use corn-based ethanol in gasoline, which costs $31 billion per year

Obama’s Massive Regulatory Agenda


Federal agencies wrote a record breaking 81,611 pages of regulations last year to advance President Obama’s massive regulatory agenda which includes tackling issues from global warming to health care. (1)

“That’s higher than 2014 at 77,687 pages and higher than it’s ever been at 81,405,” wrote Clyde Crews, the vice president for policy at the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Obama has lived up to his promise to use his ‘pen and phone’ to change US policy, issuing 29 executive orders and 31 executive memoranda last year. That’s on top of the 3,378 final rules issued by federal agencies like the EPA and the Energy Department. (1)

Some of the costliest regulations imposed on Americans were issued by the EPA to regulate power plants and air quality. The EPA also issued a new rule redefining ‘waters of the United states’ under the Clean Water Act which will drastically increase the agency’s control over US waterways, including ditches, streams, and private ponds.

Obama has a zeal to shut down every coal-fired plant in the US. At the heart of his program are EPA regulations that will make it impossible to open any new coal plant and will systematically shut down existing plants. “Politically the White House is hesitant to say they’re not having a war on coal,” explained one of Obama’s climate advisers. “On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.” (2)

But the regulations listed in the Federal Register are only the tip of the iceberg, according to Crews, who wrote regulation “No longer stops with the rules we can readily count in the Federal Register. Agency guidance documents and numerous other kinds of notices, bulletins, circulars, memoranda and decrees make up Regulatory Dark Matter. These agency guidelines and other documents can also have significant effects on the US economy.” (1)

Local, state and federal governments are all guilty of enforcing costly laws and regulations. At the federal level, the biggest costs from from vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, which cost consumers $55 billion a year, and the requirement to use corn-based ethanol in gasoline, which costs $31 billion per year. Occupational licensure at the state level costs consumers $127 billion per year. Local and land-use restrictions drive up the cost of housing by $209 billion per year reports Salim Furth., (3)

Government policy mistakes significantly raise the price of consumer goods. Mistakes discussed in Furth’s paper add $4,440 a year to the annual expenses of the average American family. Most policy mistakes raise costs by limiting supply. Policymakers can lower the cost of living by removing unnecessary regulations and licensure requirements, streamlining bureaucracy, and ending protections that have been granted for favored industries. Citizens and local legislators need not wait for Washington to ease the cost of living. The most costly policy mistakes can be fixed at the state and local levels.

The policy mistakes cost Americans $546 billion per year or 4.6 percent of total consumption. That is comparable to the Department of Defense budget and 18 times the budget of the National Institutes of Health. It is more than half as much as Americans spend on groceries, and more than the rent paid by every renter in America. It is three times the budget of the State of California. And we pay it again and again, year after year, says Furth. (3)

Winston Churchill once said, “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.” (4)  Perhaps David Cameron believes this. In England during January 2014, Cameron boasted of tearing up 80,000 pages of environmental protections and building guidelines as part of a new push to build more houses and cut costs for businesses of up to 850 million pounds (1 billion Euros) per year. (5)

Clearly, we are going in the opposite direction—at record breaking speed.

Jack Dini
Livermore, CA

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References

1. Michael Bastasch, “2015 was a record year for federal regulators,” The Daily Caller, December 30, 2015

2. Charles Krauthammer, “Obama’s global-warming folly,” Washington Post, July 4, 2013

3. Salim Furth, “Costly mistakes: how bad policies raise the cost of living,” The Heritage Foundation, No. 3081, November 23, 2015

4. W. Mark Crain and Thomas D. Hopkins, “The impact of regulatory costs on small firms,” Small Business Research Summary, ISSN 1076-8904, October 2010

5. “David Cameron pledges to rip up green regulations,” The Global Warming Policy Foundation, gwpf.org, January 30, 2014