Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State

Ten Thousand Commandments is an annual report by CEI Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on the growing compliance costs of federal regulations. The purpose of the report is to hold legislators and regulators accountable for the regulatory burdens they impose on American business owners, workers, and families.

About the report: The federal government primarily funds its programs in three ways. The first is to raise taxes to pay for new programs. The second is to borrow money to pay for them (with a promise to pay back that borrowed money, with interest, from taxes collected in the future).

The third way the government can accomplish its goals is to regulate. That is, rather than pay directly and book the expense of a new initiative, it can require that the private sector and lower-level governments pay. By regulating, the government can carry out desired programs but avoid using tax dollars to fund them. This process sometimes allows Congress to escape accountability and to blame agencies for costs. Since disclosure and accountability for regulation are limited, policymakers have little incentive to care about the extent of regulatory costs or where those costs stand in relation to ordinary government spending. Regulatory costs are unbudgeted and lack the formal presentation to the public and media to which ordinary federal spending is subject, and thus regulatory initiatives allow the government to direct private-sector resources to a significant degree without much public fuss. In that sense, regulation can be thought of as off-budget taxation.

Ten Thousand Commandments 2012: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State

Highlights from this year's report:

• Estimated regulatory costs, while "off budget," are equivalent to over 48% the level of federal spending itself.

• The 2011 Federal Register finished at 81,247 pages, just shy of 2010’s all-time record-high 81,405 pages.

• Regulatory compliance costs dwarf corporate income taxes of $198 billion, and exceed individual income taxes and even pre-tax corporate profits.

• Agencies issued 3,807 final rules in 2011, a 6.5 percent increase over 3,573 in 2010.

• Of the 4,128 regulations in the works at year-end 2011, 212 were “economically significant,” meaning they generally wield at least $100 million in economic impact.

• 822 of those 4,128 regulations in the works would affect small businesses.

• The total number of economically significant rules finalized in 2011 was 79, down slightly from 2010 but up 92.7 percent over five years, and 108 percent over 10 years.

• Recent costly federal agency initiatives include the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards Rule and the Department of Transportation’s Fuel Economy Standards.