Red Tape Rising: Six Years of Escalating Regulation Under Obama

By James A Gattuso

A new report sheds light on regulations and their enormous cost under President Obama.

The huge number of new regulations imposed on the private sector under President Obama proves ...

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The report – "Red Tape Rising: Six Years of Escalating Regulations Under Obama" – comes from The Heritage Foundation. Diane Katz, research fellow in regulatory policy at Heritage, is co-author of the report.
"This is the ninth edition or installment of our series 'Red Tape Rising' in which we track the number and cost of major regulations, which are rules that are expected to cost the economy at least $100 million a year," she explains.
According to Katz, under the six years of the Obama administration the country has witnessed total new regulatory cost of about $80 billion a year.
"This appears to be unparalleled with any prior administration, and that total dollar figure is from about 184 major rules," notes Katz. "Now, I caution that that $80 billion figure is a pretty low estimate because the administration has failed in many rules to actually calculate the cost as they're supposed to do."

Nevertheless, Katz says the $80 billion figure is more than twice as much as was done in the Bush administration at the six-year mark.
A lot of the rules come from Dodd-Frank and what Heritage calls "the misnamed Affordable Care Act" (aka, ObamaCare), although Katz says the nation has also seen a great deal of energy and environmental regulations – "and those continue to be dominant," she adds.
The report also warns of "another 126 economically significant rules on the administration's agenda, such as directives to farmers for growing and harvesting fruits and vegetables; strict limits on credit access for service members; and, yet another redesign of light bulbs."