A Sustained Recovery Needs a Deregulatory Stimulus

Over in The Hill, Wayne Crews and I argue that more deficit spending won’t help the COVID recovery. Regulatory reform is more powerful stimulus and won’t increase the deficit. It will also leave both the private and the public sector more resilient against the next crisis:

Trump’s failure to engage Congress was a massive missed opportunity, especially since his party held a majority in both chambers of Congress for his first two years. The regulatory “tax” is at least as significant as the fiscal tax reform he emphasized. Had Congress codified “Trumpian” reforms in legislation—and GOP members had introduced several bills to do so (and have even done so again, with greater futility, in the Biden era)—they would still be in place.

Now, as the recovery from COVID and the political reaction to it continues, regulatory relief would be a potent economic stimulus that would not add to the deficit like everything else that was and is being pursued, such as Biden’s costly and interventionist jobs and families plans. 

The just-released 2021 edition of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual Ten Thousand Commandments report pegs regulatory costs at least $2 trillion per year—more than twice the total cost of the infrastructure spending bill the House passed last Thursday.

Read the whole thing here. See also the just-released 2021 edition of Wayne’s Ten Thousand Commandments report.