Obama’s Midnight Regulations Will Cost U.S. Economy $6 Billion
Last month, an energy policy analyst for The Wall Street Journal reported that President Barack Obama’s administration had begun “readying at least five big environmental rules to issue in the two months between the election and Inauguration Day.”
In late December, the American Action Forum provided a frightening breakdown of just how much money these regulations would ultimately cost the American taxpayers.
“These five measures alone could impose $5.1 billion in costs and more than 350,000 paperwork burden hours,” AAF wrote. “In addition, three other rules in proposed form could add $898 million in burdens and 146,000 paperwork hours, for a cumulative total of nearly $6 billion in potential midnight costs and nearly 500,000 burden hours from the two agencies.”
That sounded like a lot of money.
According to reports, four of the rules were to originate with the Environmental Protection Agency, while the last was to be implemented via the Department of the Interior.
Specifically, the new rules would regulate methane production on public lands, renewable fuel standards, stream protection, offshore oil and gas leasing and renewable development on federal lands.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, conservative commentator Kimberly A. Strassel noted that Obama was reportedly also planning to implement a flurry of additional regulations “on commodities speculation, immigrant workers and for-profit colleges — among others.”
The goal, according to Strassel, was to overwhelm President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration with more rules and regulations than it would have either the time or resources to repeal.
The best strategy for the incoming president, she continued, was to “send a powerful message to future presidents and build public support by highlighting the ‘midnight regulation’ phenomenon and then making it a priority to ax every final Obama order.”
It might be tedious to do that, but it would send a powerful message to Obama and other similarly minded political leaders that overly burdensome regulations will not be tolerated anymore.
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