With less than 100 days left in his presidency, the think pieces about President Obama’s legacy are being written. His biggest legacy may be the record-setting number and cost of regulations that he has imposed on the economy and on state and local governments.
In terms of the number of pages of new regulations, Obama is on pace to print seven of the eight fattest editions of the Federal Register in history. This year’s could be the fattest ever, according to an analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, blowing away the previous record (set by Obama in 2010) of 81,405 pages.
But when it comes to regulation, pages matter a lot less than economic impact. There, too, Obama has really put his stamp on the country. New federal standards for cars, electrical generation, appliances and financial advice (to name just four prominent examples) make all those goods and services more expensive.
Obama has added 600 “major” regulations (defined as those that each cost the economy at least $100 million annually) and 101 unfunded mandates, about twice what President George W. Bush produced in his two terms. These new regulations impose more than 10 billion hours of federal paperwork on businesses, taxpayers, and state and local governments who must comply with them.
The bite that all this regulation takes out of national economic growth is astounding. Even before the customary flurry of last-minute rules that we can expect in January, Obama’s unfunded mandates alone have added just under $600 billion in new annual costs to the economy. That’s 3.6 percent of gross domestic product. It is also just a bit less than the value of Apple, Inc., so perhaps you could think of all this regulation as a phantom company that is quietly sucking in society’s resources and throwing some people out of work.
On a per capita basis, the cost of Obama’s regulations comes to $2,496 for each and every man, woman and child, according to an analysis by the American Action Forum. So here’s another way to think about it: Just imagine that every household pays every year from now on for each person living there to get the most souped-up version available of the 15-inch MacBook Pro — but the computers are never delivered. That’s what Obama’s regulations have done for you or, rather, taken away from you.
Not all regulation is bad, and some is necessary. But Obama’s presidency demonstrates how regulating can spiral out of control. Like political corruption, it stealthily imposes a tax on everything we do and buy.
There is an answer to this in Congress, although it will take the election of a new and more humble president to make it happen. The REINS Act, which passed the House last summer, would give Congress a second bite at the apple any time regulators attempt to use one of its laws to justify a big new regulation. Congress would have to approve such regulations with an affirmative vote. That represents a step up from the current system, in which Congress must (usually) override a presidential veto if it wants to overturn a bad or costly regulation.
Reform could not only prevent the ruinous snowballing of regulations that we’ve suffered under Obama, but also restore the balance of power. The people’s elected representatives can be judged and held accountable for their decisions to impose new costs, whereas bureaucrats who make the rules behind closed doors usually cannot.
If America learns just one thing from Obama’s time in office, it should be that future presidents need to be held more tightly in check. Regulatory reform is one substantive way of accomplishing that.
