How Is the Shutdown Affecting Regulation?
Short answer: not much. Over at the Daily Caller, I go over some data from this shutdown, as well as the two Gingrich-Clinton showdowns and find that this shutdown will likely have almost no net effect on the amount of new regulations issued. Regulations might be down to a slow trickle right now, but agencies will make up for it when they re-open their doors. But there is an upside to it:
This is not entirely a bad thing. As the late Nobel-winning economist Ronald Coase wrote, “An economist who, by his efforts, is able to postpone by a week a government program which wastes $100 million a year (what I would consider a modest success) has, by his action, earned his salary for the whole of his life.” By that measure, and no other, President Obama and his Republican opponents are turning out to be fine economists.
As so often happens, the hyperbole in the shutdown debate is missing the fact that this shutdown just isn’t particularly impactful, especially on the regulatory front. Read the whole piece here.