79,066 pages; $181.5 billion dollars; 10.03 billion hours of paperwork. Those are the tallies and costs of government regulations imposed this year, according to the American Action Forum’s count.
AAF, a conservative think tank, annually wades through the regulations in the Federal Register, and records all regulatory burdens and costs to businesses and the government.
Breaking down the $181.5 billion total, AAF worked that out in terms of costs to individuals. It amounts to $567 per capita, $692 per voter, and $726 million per day the government was open.
Two new EPA regulations will cost the most overall. The “Clean Power Plan” is expected to cost $8.8 billion, while an ozone rule could impose $15 billion.
The Department of Energy also ranked high on the list, with 14 regulations totaling $3.6 billion in annual burdens. A new Department of Transportation regulation for “rear-view vehicle visibility” will cost $924 annually.
Other regulatory offenders include—shocker—Dodd Frank and Obamacare, particularly the new calorie laboring law.
California saw the most new regulations, with $7.9 billion in added costs.
According to a count by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the current page-count for the Federal Register is the fifth-longest in history. Five of the six longest registers were published under Obama. Last October, the House Financial Services Committee measured the register’s page at around eight and a half feet, precariously piling the pages for a mock retro horror trailer, “The Thing That Kills Jobs.”
Since 2008, when AAF began these annual studies, 2014 landed in the top three years for regulatory costs. 2012 takes first place, at $32.7 billion.
$95 billion in regulatory costs have been piled on since Obama took office.
