Killing Us Softly With Overregulation

The Patriot Post discusses Wayne Crews's annual report on the size and cost of federal regulation. 

Each year the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a market-oriented think tank, compiles a report on federal regulation called “Ten Thousand Commandments.” The latest iteration, just published, tallies the economic cost of compliance with regulatory decrees in America at $1.9 trillion annually. That’s a sum so enormous that if “federal regulation” were a country, it would boast the ninth-largest economy on earth, ranking between India and Russia.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, federal spending in fiscal 2015 totaled nearly $3.7 trillion. So the bite taken by federal regulation out of the economy last year was equal to half the level of federal spending itself — in effect, a 50 percent hike in the price we pay to be ruled by Washington. The hidden regulatory “tax” on the average US household amounts to $14,842 per year. That’s more than most families spend on anything in their budget except housing. “More is ‘spent’ on embedded regulation,” writes Wayne Crews, the author of the CEI report, “than on health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services, and savings.” What Obama said five years ago is truer than ever: “Regulations do have costs.”

Read the full article at The Patriot Post.