DOGE target: Paperwork hits 10 billion hours, equals 15,000 lifetimes

Washington Examiner cited CEI’s expert on financial regulation

“For periodic real-time assessments, the OMB maintains an online landing page for ‘Government-Wide Totals for Active Information Collections.’ It appears as if the time tax tackling isn’t going too well, since as of today it stands at 12.3 billion ‘total annual hours’ in the OMB’s ‘Inventory of Currently Approved Information Collections,’ compared to the 10.5 billion hours detailed in the most current full report. The dead tape is greater than 17,000 lifetimes by that reckoning,” said Clyde Wayne Crews, the regulations expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

In a blog post, Crews said that the paperwork burden should be one of the first topics President-elect Donald Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” should look at.

Cutting the red tape “tax” could also help cut the estimated cost of the annual paperwork burden, $187-$420 billion. A similar report Secrets reported on last week put the total paperwork bill to Americans under Biden at $1.8 trillion.

“Assuming $40 an hour would mean over $420 billion in mere paper-shuffling costs at the new ICB’s 10.5 billion paperwork hours level. Importantly, that’s not counting actual compliance with underlying rules and regulations,” said Crews.

Read more at Washington Examiner