The Obama administration has broken another White House record: publishing the most red tape ever.
And with still 35 more days to go in the administration, during which departments are scrambling to implement more regulations that could tie the incoming Trump administration up for years, the red tape is expected go expand even further into uncharted territory.
According to regulation watcher Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the administration added a shocking 10,000 pages to the Bible of rules and regs, the Federal Register, since Thanksgiving.
The total today stands at 91,642. In all of 2015, the administration published 80,261 pages.
Crews said that Obama already held the record for publishing red tape, but that the 2016 number is way over the top.
“This morning is special. Today standing at 91,642 pages, the Federal Register is 10,000 pages higher than the prior all-time record. Ninety-thousand pages is heretofore unheard of. Up until this year, the 80,000 page mark was the shocker,” he said.
Crews previewed the Federal Register count with Secrets and blogged his analysis here.
President-elect Trump has promised to reverse or kill some of Obama’s regulations, even promising to eliminate two current regs for every one he proposes.
And CEI has just issued its agenda for where Trump should start and how deep he should cut.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
