An op-ed in one of President Obama’s hometown papers, the Chicago Sun-Times, highlights the 4,257 new regulations that his administration currently has in the works (219 of which will cost at least $100 million apiece, annually). The op-ed draws particular attention to one specific regulatory effort: the Environmental Protection Agency’s backdoor attempt to impose cap and trade.

Having failed to get cap and trade through an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, the Obama administration has now moved on to Plan B. As Time magazine has noted, “On Jan. 2, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enacted what are the first regulations of modern stationary sources of greenhouse gases.” Time reports that while EPA administrator Lisa Jackson is claiming to be proceeding in a “measured and careful” manner, “eventually the EPA will be issuing regulations for nearly all sources of greenhouse gases.”  Time concludes that the EPA is simply “taking its time as it embarks on what could be the most far-reaching environmental regulatory scheme in American history.”