By Jordan LaPorta
According to a new study from the conservative American Action Forum (AAF), the Barack Obama Administration has issued 600 major regulations totaling $743 billion over the past seven-and-a-half years. On a yearly basis, the president has averaged 81 regulations with an economic impact of $100 billion. Essentially, that is a new executive rule every four to five days.
Broken down per capita, the president’s orders have created a regulatory imposition of $2,294 on every man, woman, and child in the United States. America’s regulatory burden from the President’s actions alone is larger than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Norway and Israel combined.
“In the equivalent amount of time to complete 194 million additional hours of paperwork, it would take 97,429 employees working full-time (2,000 hours a year) to comply with these new federal requirements,” the study says. “That’s roughly the population of Albany, NY working full-time filling out government forms.”
AAF projects that Obama’s total regulation count will reach 814 by the time he leaves offices in January, costing the economy $813 billion. To get to that number, the president would have to approve proposed rules on greenhouse gas standards for heavy-duty trucks, federal policy for the protection of human subjects, and efficiency standards for manufactured housing. Comparatively, the George W. Bush Administration issued 426 major rules from 2001 to 2009.
Over time, the general trend has been for the number of executive regulations to increase. While some years are outlandishly high, the eleven year trend has still been in the upward direction.
(c/o AAF)
“Someone must pay the cost for more than $740 billion in regulatory burdens,” the study says. “Employees could pay through reduced wages or unemployment. Shareholders could pay through lower returns. Eventually consumers could bear this burden in the form of higher prices.”
With the trend likely to continue, the next President could reach 1,000 regulations if elected to a two-year turn. Polling presently shows Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with a sizable lead over Republican Donald Trump, neither of whom have shown to be proponents of deregulation. Clinton, who has run on the record of the current administration, would plausibly continue the governing practices of her former boss and create more rules for the U.S. economy.
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