The federal regulatory bill imposes a heavy toll

Last week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released its annual Ten Thousand Commandments report on the proliferation of federal laws, rules and regulations. The cost of excessive red tape is significant, manifesting itself in slower economic growth, higher consumer costs and lost jobs.

While many edicts are necessary to protect public safety, many more are redundant, wasteful and anti-competitive, piling on unnecessary costs and stymieing innovation. As an example, the Cato Institute calculates that the TSA's airport shoe removal rule, implemented in 2005 and finally repealed in 2024, "easily imposed tens of billions of dollars in economic costs over the 19 years it was pointlessly in place."

But that's just a pittance of the overall burden. The CEI report notes that "federal regulation's total compliance costs and economic effects are at least $2.153 trillion annually, and certainly vastly higher." That amounts to an average regulatory tax of nearly $16,000 per family, higher than "expenditures on health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services and savings."

So vast is Washington's rule-making apparatus that nearly 450 agencies have the power to issue binding orders. The Federal Register — which contains government rules and proposed regulations — became much fatter under Joe Biden, hitting a record 106,000 pages. Under the Trump administration, it has fallen to 61,000, CEI reports.

This massive array of rules is so dense that attorney Harvey Silverglate argued in a 2009 book that, under federal criminal law, "the average person unknowingly commits several federal crimes daily."

Beltway alphabet agencies now impose 22 rules for every law that Congress passes and the president signs, the CEI report found. This showcases the importance of efforts by the White House and the Supreme Court to rein in an overactive regulatory state that often acts without proper authority from Congress. This would reset the balance between the executive and legislative branches, demanding the House and Senate not cede excessive authority to unelected bureaucrats who are only too happy to usurp legislative powers.

Trump has ordered that two rules be repealed for every new one imposed. That's a great start. But more can be done to reduce the burden without compromising consumer safety. For instance, the CEI report recommends a Regulatory Reduction Committee to "compile regular reports on outdated, unnecessary and duplicative rules that Congress would eliminate by joint resolution." This would be another worthwhile step forward for vital efforts to push the regulatory beast back behind constitutional boundaries.

(COMMENT, BELOW)