I & I Editorial BoardOn Joe Biden’s first day in office, he signed a raft of executive orders, one of which we said was “almost entirely overlooked but could easily end up having the biggest impact.”
Turns out we were right.
The executive order – “Modernizing Regulatory Review” – would, we predicted, “unleash the regulatory state with a ferocity never before seen in this country.”
With this one executive order, Biden shows that he’s intent on giving regulators carte blanche to impose massive new rules on businesses and households, on virtually anything and everything they do, regardless of costs. There’s little else Biden has done so far that will have as wide-ranging an impact.
As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Clyde Wayne Crews explains, that order “undermined the crucial watchdog mission of the White House Office of Management and Budget,” which had served as a check on the administrative state. “The federal government’s sole watchdog … has been transformed into a cheerleader for regulation.”
The CEI publishes the definitive guide to federal regulation each year, called “10,000 Commandments.”
Last week, the Federal Register, which is the repository of Washington’s rules and regulations, provided the latest evidence that Biden let regulators off the chain.
The 2024 Federal Register weighed in at 107,262 pages – the most in history and a 45% increase from Biden’s first year in office.
Last year, alone, Biden finalized 3,248 rules, of which 343 were deemed “significant,” meaning they added more than $200 million in compliance costs.
Earlier this year, the American Action Forum put the price tag of Biden’s rules-and-regulations-frenzy at $1.37 trillion, leading the House Budget Committee chairman to note that “This is a staggering 45 times the regulatory costs accumulated under President Trump and almost five times the regulatory costs added under President Obama.”
The problem is that reining in the regulatory state won’t be easy, even with a committed deregulator in the White House.
As it stands, repealing an existing regulation requires that the administration go through the laborious process of writing a new rule, which then opens it up to delays and legal challenges, including from special interests that benefit from the current rules.
Trump was just getting on roll with this effort when his first term ended. So there’s hope that he will be off to a running start come Jan. 20, with plans to repeal as many of Biden’s – and Obama’s – rules as possible.
But more needs to be done. Congress has the power to permanently hamper the regulatory state with legislation that requires all rules to expire every five years unless a new rule is written, and justified, to keep it in place. It can and should also require that any significant new regulation take effect only with an affirmative vote by Congress.
Dismantling the regulatory leviathan – and destroying this terrible Biden legacy – will take a full-scale, concerted, no-holds-barred, effort.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Good article; however, simply stating, “The 2024 Federal Register weighed in at 107,262 pages…” is slightly misleading. How so? You have to account for the Federal Register’s (FR) “Notifications & Corrections” which correct any mistakes, errors, or misprints, which is published annually for each Title of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Additionally, any notices seeking people to serve of Federal Advisory Committees plus the notices for these meetings, must be published in the FR. Want to deregulate and remove regulations? That must be published too in the FR to allow for public comment. All those fireworks displays that take place on our water ways, that gets published too.
However, I will agree that some Departments and Agencies published overbearing rules using faulty economic data to drive an agenda, such as DOE’s rule on gas stoves, furnaces, and tankless water heaters.
I know this is about regulations-but Biden’s legacy extends far more.
His pardons of people who committed and were found guilty of hurting American citizens and giving them either complete freedom or relative freedom is shameful. So is his so-called reasoning: He views the death penalty as barbaric. I guess in Biden’s delusional and demented state that only applies to criminals-not to victims.
As far as I’m aware he also is going for pardoning those who are not yet (not because the evidence is not there but because of Biden and Garland’s assaults against the law by practicing lawfare) charged with a crime. I don’t believe he would pardon these upstanding derelicts if he believed they hadn’t committed any crime.
His legacy also includes allowing so many illegals into this country that pretty soon California will be an entire Democratic Party sinecure. This is probably why Newsome does not seem concerned by those many who are leaving California. He has made such a mess of California the only people who would vote for him are the illegals he granted sanctuary to and which he seems determined to allow to vote.
I cannot think of one thing that can endear or burnish Biden’s legacy-except perhaps this: Thank God he will soon be a memory-and a bad memory at that.