Obama’s 2016 Federal Register Just Topped Highest Page Count of All Time
Well that didn’t him take long.
President Barack Obama’s Federal Register, the daily depository of rules and regulations, added 572 pages today, and stands at 81,640 pages for 2016.
This is the all-time record. Ever.
Obama also held the prior record, 81,405 pages in 2010.
The 80,000 page mark has been passed in only three previous years (2010, 2011, 2015).
The chart below shows the highest 15 Federal Register Federal Register page counts. Note that Obama holds seven of the 10 highest-ever tallies.
Yet nearly a month and a half remain in this record-setting year.
No one knows what the future holds, but at a pace of well over 1,000 pages weekly, the Federal Register could easily top 90,000 pages this year.
The simple algebra says that at the current pace we’ll add 11,190 pages over the next 44 days, to end 2016 at around 92,830 pages.
This is astonishing and should be of great concern, and intolerable, to policymakers.
It is remarkable enough that the all-time record has been passed before Thanksgiving.
For the record, the highest calendar-year page counts for prior presidents, in descending order, are as follows:
- George W. Bush: 79,435 in 2008
- Bill Clinton: 74,258 in 2000
- Jimmy Carter: 73,258 in 1980
- George Bush 57,973 in 1991
- Ronald Reagan: 57,736 in 1981
The new president-elect Donald Trump could take a page from President Reagan, who brought page counts down from Carter’s 73,258 to as low as. 44,812.
We don’t need a pen and phone, we need a meat axe.
