Failing to stop the rule-makers will ruin the
economy, by Richard Rahn,
5/23/16, ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The successful parasite does not kill its host.
But the federal regulatory parasite is in the process of killing the golden
goose upon which it feeds. Several studies from highly reputable institutions
have been released in the last number of days, all with similar alarming
conclusions — namely, the number and costs of federal regulations are growing
much faster than the economy, and they are having a significant negative impact
on economic growth and job creation.
From the new annual report, Ten Thousand
Commandments 2016, prepared by Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, we learn that the costs of federal regulations — nearly $1.9
trillion — is now greater than the Internal Revenue Service collects from both
personal income and corporate taxes. “Federal regulation is a hidden tax that
amounts to nearly $15,000 per U.S. household each year.”
“Over the last 58 years government spending to
write and enforce regulation has increased by more than 20-fold (after
adjusting for inflation), and the number of bureaucrats has increased by a
factor of five,” according to a study released on May 21 by Susan Dudley,
director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Department, and
Melinda Warren, director of the Weidenbaum Center Forum at Washington
University in St. Louis. There are now over a “quarter million full-time
regulators” grinding out some 80,000 pages of regulations per year.
A study by the Mercatus Center of George Mason
University released in April found that the economic drag from the regulations
has been reducing economic growth by an average of 0.8 percent per year. This
factor alone accounts for almost half of the growth deficit that the U.S.
economy has been experiencing for the last eight years. In practical terms, it
means millions of new jobs have not been created, and wages for existing jobs
have stagnated because of the ever-increasing costs of new regulations.
When Moses came down from the mount, he
brought with him 10 rules covering most things that people really needed to
know and could remember. There are now literally millions of federal rules that
we are all supposed to have knowledge of and comply with — clearly an
impossible task for any mere mortal. The result is we have lost our individual
liberty because, if the feds decide to target you, they can always find some
rules you have broken. The IRS is Exhibit A, with more than 70,000 pages of
rules that no one can possibly know. There are even rules about taking your own
money out of your own bank account, which is what the Justice Department just
convicted former House Speaker Dennis Hastert for violating.
Some of the rules and regulations are
beneficial, but the public has no way of knowing which are and which are not
beneficial — because most government departments refuse to do serious
cost-benefit analyses of the rules they promulgate. President Reagan was
serious about trying to contain the regulatory monster, so he assigned former
Director of the Office of the Management and Budget Jim Miller to take on the
task, which Mr. Miller did in a vigorous and competent way. But over the years
after Reagan, Mr. Miller and others left, the efforts slowly waned until the
Obama era, when barely even lip service is paid to cost-benefit analysis.
Comments
UN Agenda 21 implementation needs to be stopped. The most potentially damaging regulations
include the war on coal and the prospect of doubling and redoubling our
electric bills.
Implementing plans to return the US to its Constitutional
roots is also necessary to restore our economy, get the government out of our
business and pay off our National Debt.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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