Just What The Economy Needs--More Regulations!

Obama’s Midnight Regulations Will Cost U.S. Economy $6 Billion

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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.

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The Obama administration is readying at least 5 big environmental rules to issue in the two months between the election & Inauguration Day.

11:33 AM - 7 Nov 2016

 
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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.

H/T Washington Examiner

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Will Trump Make The Necessary Slashes In Regulations? We Sure Do Hope So

Report Reveals $42 Billion in Regulations Trump Could Slash on Day 1

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Throughout much of his successful campaign for the presidency, President-elect Donald Trump spoke repeatedly about his intentions to roll back, if not entirely undo, many of the business-killing federal regulations put in place by President Barack Obama’s administration.

To that end, the American Action Forum dug into the regulatory nightmare emanating out of Washington, D.C., and compiled a list of dozens of regulations that could be immediately cut by Trump and the Republican-led Congress, according to The Daily Caller.

Utilizing what is known as the Congressional Review Act to invalidate at least 48 major regulations, the AAF report noted that, “Together, those rules impose more than $42.5 billion in total costs, $6.5 billion in annualized costs, and 53 million paperwork burden hours.”

“Republicans have the opportunity to enact regulatory reform on a scale not witnessed since President Reagan,” the report continued. “CRA disapproval resolutions seem poised to be a significant part of those plans.”

Analysts and report authors Sam Batkins and Dan Goldbeck provided a few examples of cuts that could immediately be made, such as to the Department of Interior’s restrictions on oil drilling in the Arctic region, or the Environmental Protection Agency‘s ludicrous fuel efficiency standards for the trucking industry.

The Arctic drilling rule has been estimated to cost more than $2 billion, while the EPA’s industry-killing fuel regulation costs soared to an astonishing $29.3 billion.

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“Although it is unlikely that Congress will cash in all its political capital to this end, several high-profile major rules – and their sizable burdens – could go by the wayside in 2017,” the report noted, tempering expectations for a broad sweep of all burdensome regulations right away.

Furthermore, there are other regulations that may not have even been written yet that could be quickly overturned, due to various agencies in the Obama administration rushing to push through new “midnight” regulations at the last moment.

Alas, Obama’s regulators have been quite busy this year, already formulating more than 78,000 pages of new rules thus far in 2016, with an estimated cost of at least $148 billion. The administration sill has a month and a half still remaining to write more.

Nevertheless, we anxiously await Trump and his team to finally taking office and beginning the arduous process of taking a scythe to the field of chaff that has grown up in and around D.C.’s regulatory structure.

Please share this on Facebook and Twitter to let everyone know that Trump and Congress can get to work immediately cutting back some of Obama’s many new federal regulations.

What do you think of this report noting that Trump and Congress can undo billions of dollars worth of burdensome regulations right away?

Economy Continues To Slide

Obama rushes to kill the economy in final months

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Sam RolleyViews: 6,674

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In an effort to ensure that Congress and the next president are powerless to reverse as many of his economy killing regulations as possible, President Barack Obama has rushed through $85 billion in new regulations since the beginning of the year.

The 44 new economically significant regulations were shoved through ahead of a May 23 deadline dubbed “Regulation Day” that officially marks Obama’s status as a lame duck.

“Once Regulation Day passes, the next Congress will have an opportunity to review the administration’s Lame Duck rules,” explained Sam Batkins, regulatory policy directory at the American Action Forum.

That’s why April was one of the busiest regulatory months this year.

And Obama made his regulatory rush count, creating an additional 13.9 million regulatory compliance hours for American businesses and costing every individual in the country an additional $116 in hidden regulatory taxes with his 44 new economically significant rules.

The costliest regulations just rammed through by the president include:

• Diligence for Financial Institutions: $2.5 billion
• Regulation of Smokeless Tobacco: $1.1 billion
• Transportation of Human and Animal Food: $998 million
• Blowout Preventer Systems: $890 million
• “Medicaid Mega Rule:” $471 million

“These regulatory costs essentially represent unchecked power for the president. Absent an intervention from the federal courts or a surprising supermajority in Congress, these rules will likely persist indefinitely,” Batkins said.

According to an AAF analysis of Obama’s regulatory scheming this year, the current administration has imposed nearly 40 percent more costly regulations than a president has at any point since 1996.

“Indeed, the administration has also approved three times as many economically significant rulemakings as were approved in 1996,” said Batkins.