Federal regulatory costs tax the average American household more than $15,000 per year under the Biden administration, according to a Competitive Enterprise Institute annual report released Tuesday.
Households pay an average of $15,788 in hidden regulatory costs, according to the annual report, written by Clyde Wayne Crews and titled “Ten Thousand Commandments.” That’s more than what they pay for food, clothing, education, or any other household expense other than housing, consuming 17% of income and representing 22% of household expenses.
Federal regulations’ total compliance costs and economic effects add up to at least $2.117 trillion, rivaling individual income-tax costs estimated at $2.328 trillion. Regulatory costs are nearly four times the corporate income tax of $546 billion.
High-significance rules established by the Biden administration outnumber those of the Bush, Obama, or Trump administrations.
The changes highlighted in this year’s report can be attributed to President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14094, titled “Modernizing Regulatory Review,” Crews said.
“This order cemented Biden’s Day One changes that had already dismantled every regulatory liberalization measure established during the Trump administration,” Crews told The Daily Signal.
Biden can be seen as the ‘Edward Scissorhands’ of regulatory disclosure. Not only did he end the one-in, two-out cost freeze for regulations and eliminate a vital portal revealing hidden regulatory ‘dark matter,’ but his 2023 executive order also raised the threshold for rules considered significant enough to warrant extra scrutiny from $100 million in annual economic effects to $200 million.
According to Crews, the same directive instructed the Office of Management and Budget to rewrite the “Circular A-4″ guidance on how and when agencies should analyze regulations.
“This move has transformed the OMB from the watchdog role it embodied since the 1980s into a companion of the agencies it is supposed to supervise, pursuing ‘net benefits’ as defined by progressive ideals rather than constitutional normalcy,” Crews said.
In addition, his championing of legislation such as the Inflation, Infrastructure, and CHIPS and Science laws—unfortunately, with some GOP support—promise plenty of downstream regulation, now starting to materialize and affect small business and state and local government.
Rules affecting small businesses and local government have increased. Over the past three years, the Biden administration has averaged 870 rules annually in the Federal Register affecting small businesses, in contrast to 694 during Barack Obama’s presidency and 701 from then-President Donald Trump.
The Biden administration has issued 507 mandates affecting state governments and 340 affecting local governments.
Federal employees spent 10.34 billion hours completing federal paperwork in 2022, according to the OMB’s Information Collection Budget, the equivalent of 14,883 human lifetimes.
Agencies issued 3,018 rules in the calendar year 2023, according to the report. Congress only enacted 68 laws, so agencies issued what amounted to 44 rules for every law enacted by Congress.
