Friendly Mentions for ‘10,000 Commandments’ Study
Here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute we’re happy to see the attention being received by the 25th anniversary edition of Wayne Crews’ popular study of regulatory cost, “10,000 Commandments”. We’ve seen mentions in the news media and on Capitol Hill, we’ve compared it to the calculations compiled by other researchers, and put the large numbers involved into context with comparisons to consumer expenses and using illustrative graphics. But we’re especially excited to see the study mentioned by our friends in the think tank and advocacy world—here are a few examples below.
Over at the Heartland Institute, Senior Fellow Sterling Burnett interviewed Wayne on the Institute’s podcast, giving this summary:
Clyde Wayne Crews’ annual report, “10,000 Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Regulatory State,” details how both Republican and Democrat administrations expand the regulatory state to gargantuan proportions. Estimates show the annual costs of regulations to the economy are between $2 and $10 trillion dollars, greater than the revenue from the personal and corporate income taxes combined. These regulations are enacted in an opaque fashion with little oversight or accountability from those imposing them. Worse still, the regulations often go beyond what the law allows, limit Americans’ freedom, and produce little benefits outside of politically favored special interests.
Eric Boehm over at Reason covered the report as part of his story on the impact of Trump administration regulatory reform measures:
On one hand, there is no doubt that the Trump administration has made slashing federal regulations a key policy goal. During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to remove two regulations from the books for every new one added. That atmosphere has reduced red tape and slowed the creation of new rules, says Clyde Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the author of “10,000 Commandments,” an annual assessment of the size of the federal regulatory state.
According to the new edition of “10,000 Commandments,” the Trump administration delayed or repealed more than 1,500 regulations passed by the Obama administration. Congress helped out by using the Congressional Review Act to eliminate 15 Obama-era rules during 2017. The results include a rollback of the feds’ role in land use decisions and an end to the Social Security Administration’s attempt to regulate guns.
The Georgia Public Policy Foundation included us in their Friday Facts release:
Slow go: President Donald Trump’s first year in office saw the creation of fewer new federal regulations than any year since the National Archives started tracking regulatory rules in 1976. Even so, the administration created more than 3,200 new rules during 2017, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. That’s still 34 new regulations for every single bill passed by Congress. Source: 10,000 Commandments
Finally, check out Gary Rathburn’s interview with Wayne on his show “An Economy of One.”