Weight of U.S Regulations – 1.9 trillion

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The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released its Ten Thousand Commandments report for 2017, a snapshot of the federal regulatory state and how pervasive the effect of regulation is on our economy. CEI calculated that if federal regulations were a country, it would be the seventh-largest economy in the world, behind India and ahead of Italy. The eye-popping $1.9 trillion cost of regulations are in part a result of Congress delegating far too much rulemaking authority to federal bureaucracies.

Perhaps unsurprisingly both the Department of the Interior and EPA are in the top five most active rule-producing agencies.

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The Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis and the George Washington University Regulatory Stud¬ies Center in Washington, D.C., jointly estimate that agencies spent $63 billion in fiscal year 2016 to administer the federal regulatory state. Adding the $1.9 trillion in off-budget compliance costs brings the total reckoned regulatory enterprise to about $1.963 trillion.

If U.S. regulation was a country, it would be the world’s seventh-largest economy, ranking behind India and ahead of Italy.

The estimated cost of regulation is equivalent to half the level of federal spending, which was $3.854 trillion in 2016.

Regulatory costs of $1.9 trillion amount to 10 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, which was estimated at $18.861 trillion in 2016 by the Com¬merce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

During calendar year 2016, Congress enacted 214 laws, whereas agencies issued 3,853 rules. Thus, 18 rules were issued for every law enacted. This “Unconstitutionality Index”—the ratio of regulations issued by agencies to laws passed by Congress and signed by the president—highlights the delegation of lawmaking power to unelected agency officials. The average for the past decade has been 27.

If one assumes that all costs of federal regulation and intervention flowed all the way down to households, U.S. households would “pay” $14,809 annually on average in a regulatory hidden tax. That amounts to 21 percent of the average income of $69,629 and 26.45 percent of the expenditure budget of $55,978. The “tax” exceeds every item in the budget except housing. More is “spent” on embedded regulation than on health care, food, transportation, enter¬tainment, and apparel.

Last year, the Obama administration averaged 86 “major” rules, a 36 percent higher average annual output than that of President George W. Bush. President Obama issued 685 major rules during his term, compared with Bush’s 505.

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