EDITORIAL: Obama’s Bogus Rules

From a Washington Times editorial:

The scope of federal rule-making is bewildering. More than 700 new final rules have been published this year, and the Regulations.gov website lists 6,156 newly posted dictates of all kinds in the past 90 days. Business owners have no choice but to comply. In January 2011, Mr. Obama issued an executive order seeking to weed out unnecessary or duplicative regulations, and Mr. Sunstein claims this review process has resulted in savings to the economy that “exceeded $91 billion.” Unfortunately, in the age of Obama, this is not a lot of money. A study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute found that federal regulations cost consumers $1.2 trillion in 2007. Now the estimate has surged to about $1.7 trillion. It will take more than a few tweaks to stem the regulatory tidal wave.