Obama’s Parting Gift to Americans: $3,000 per Person in Cost of Regulations

Over the short term, it’s really easily for an administration to rig the financial markets.  Fake some statistics, trot out the Fed Chair to make some  remarks, directly intervene in the financial markets, and a president can jam the markets around and scare the daylights out of people  Over the longer term, not quite so easy as market forces build up in reaction to manipulation.

The socialist impulse in Mr. Obama is very strong.  His concern for the welfare of the people of the nation he has led is not.  He would object strongly to that last remark, but piling on the backs of Americans the costs of his compulsion to regulate everything in sight is no help to those people as they struggle to balance their budgets.  Obama doesn’t care.

So it comes as no surprise that Mr. Obama is going to leave Americans with a regulatory burden of almost $3,100 per per person.

With the formal publication of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) second round of heavy-duty truck standards, which will impose at least $29.3 billion in burdens, the total regulatory tab since 2005 has surpassed $1 trillion. These total regulatory costs are calculated through the American Action Forum’s (AAF) Reg Rodeo, a searchable database of federal regulations. This should serve as a sobering reminder of the scale of regulatory burdens imposed during the last decade.

The $1 trillion figure represents official benefit-cost analysis figures from federal regulators that AAF has complied since we started the project in 2011. It represents the long-term, or net present value of regulatory burdens that have been or will be imposed during the next few years. AAF recorded $745 billion in annual benefits during the same period. For more perspective, $1 trillion is roughly the same as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Mexico. On a per capita basis, there are 324 million people in the U.S., equating to a regulatory burden of $3,080 per person.

You can look the cost of regulations on an annual basis, and while this figure looks better, the implications are awful.

On an annual basis, the costs are less, but still staggering: $175 billion or an annual per capita burden of $540. In other words, each year every person (regardless of age) in the nation is responsible for paying roughly $540 in regulatory costs. These burdens might take the form of higher prices, fewer jobs, or reduced wages, all areas AAF has reviewed previously.

So a family of four pays an average of $2,160 per year in regulatory costs.  Do you think, perhaps, you could find something better to do with that money if only you could?

To be fair, Mr. Obama’s predecessors have not helped matters.  It’s just that Obama has been on regulatory overdrive.

There have been many milestones as AAF has tracked regulation. The Obama Administration surpassed 500 major regulations last summer, imposing $625 billion in cumulative costs. Earlier this year, regulators published the administration’s 600th major rule, increasing burdens to $743 billion. Now, thanks to data from the last term of the Bush Administration and another billion-dollar rule from EPA, the regulatory tally has surpassed $1 trillion. These figures are direct estimates from federal regulators, but it will take more than an effort from these regulators to amend hundreds of major regulations. Congress, the next president, and even the courts must participate in the next generation of regulatory modernization.

Since the resulting costs of new regulations are spread over the population and over a longer time-frame, it’s relatively easy for somebody like Obama to pile on the costs in his zeal to regulate.

As in other areas, Mr. Trump has a lot of work to do.

Source:  American Action Forum