President Obama last year made good on his promise to use a pen and phone to impose his agenda, issuing some 3,554 rules and regulations, even governing the energy efficiency of ice and vending machines, according to a new analysis.
The Competitiveness Enterprise Institute on Tuesday issued its review of the administration’s “Spring Agenda” list of regulations and found that they hid a couple of hundred and even ignored the costly hit to the economy of new clean water rules just imposed.
CEI found that Obama in six years has issued more “economically significant” rules than George W. Bush did in eight years and is on a path to imposing 47 percent more costly rules than the former president.
President Obama promised to use his pen to push his agenda if Congress blocked him. AP Photo
CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews explained in a blog posting:
The Agenda is a twice-annual cross-section of the regulatory state. It’s a pipeline showing the flow of rules and regulations at the “Active” (pre-rule, proposed and final rule states), “Completed” and “Long-term” phases.
The total number of rules in the Agenda is 3,260; that consists of 2,323 Active, 477 Completed and 460 Long-term.
Often the rules listed are holdovers from prior years. Nonetheless, since over 3,500 rules are finalized each year (there were 3,554 in 2014); this just tells us that many rules never appear in the Agenda at all.
His analysis shows how many have a significant economic impact and even lists the regulations and rules in the pipeline.
“Obama’s total count of rules last year (from spring and fall Agendas) was 69, higher than any Bush year apart from 2001,” Crews told Secrets. “Bush’s entire eight years brought 390 completed economically significant rules; Obama’s first seven years have brought 432, and we’re not even done with the seventh year yet.”
He noted that many expected to deliver a big economic blow aren’t listed.
“Incredibly, EPA doesn’t list its sweeping new Clean Water Rule on nationwide permitting on private property as ‘economically significant’ (merely ‘other significant’),” Crews wrote. “With over a million comments received at the agency, comments that it perhaps illegally self-induced, it’s hard to trust bureaucracies’ judgment with respect to the remaining 3,000-plus rules not being economically significant.”
And two of his favorites targeted the energy usage of vending machines and ice machines. He listed them:
— DOE/EE Proposed Rule Stage, Standards for Refrigerated Bottled or Canned Beverage Vending Machines, 1904-AD00.
— DOE/EE Completed Actions, Energy Efficiency Standards for Automatic Commercial Ice Makers, 1904-AC39.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
