Obama's regulation onslaught nicked the US economy for $2 trillion annually

Washington Times:

The Obama administration issued a record number of new regulations on its way out the door in 2016, leaving an administrative state that saps the economy of nearly $2 trillion a year, according to a new report being released Wednesday.

The government itself spent $63 billion in 2016 to administer and enforce all of its own regulations, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said.

With Republicans in Washington looking for reasons to streamline Washington and roll back President Barack Obama’s accomplishments, the new report is likely to be ammunition.

“The federal government’s reach extends far beyond its taxes, deficits, and borrowing. Federal environmental, safety and health, and economic regulations affect the economy by hundreds of billions — even trillions — of dollars annually,” Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. wrote in the CEI’s 2017 “Ten Thousand Commandments” report on federal regulations.

He counted 3,853 federal rules that were finalized in 2016 — the most for any year since 2005.
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But the CEI report said Congress should also bear more responsibility for the “hidden tax” of regulatory costs, which it said gets passed on to consumers to the tune of $15,000 per household.
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“The latter option would add little to federal spending but would still let Congress take credit for the program,” he wrote. “By regulating instead of spending, government can expand almost indefinitely without explicitly taxing anybody one extra penny.”
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Liberals may think regulation is cheap but it certainly is not free.   Instead of sucking $2 trillion out of the economy, the US can actually grow the economy and jobs by embracing the deregulation efforts of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.