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Categories - Copywriting - Shopping - Free Online Business Help - Telecommunications Services Articles: Government - Federal Regulations With the change in administrations, the view that the problem with the economy is a lack of regulation is proliferating on the web, on radio talk shows, in blogs, news articles, and with the mainstream media special interest groups. This view is being parroted in response to news articles as the population glows with the expectation that the new administration will put reins on an unchecked free market that is being blamed for all of our financial woes. The truth, as usual, is quite the opposite.
In 2007, according to Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, roughly 50 regulatory agencies issued 3,595 final rules, ranging from boosting fuel economy standards for light trucks to continuing a ban on bringing torch lighters into airplane cabins. Five departments (Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Treasury, and the Environmental Protection Agency) accounted for 45 percent of the new regulations. With new bureaucracies being created by the Stimuls Bill, the number of agencies issuing federal regualtions is increasing.
Since the Republicans assumed control in 2001, there has been a 13 percent decrease in the annual number of new rules. However, the new regulations’ cost to the economy will be much higher than it was before 2001. 159 of the new rules are considered to be economically significant, costing taxpayers $100 million or more per year. The number of these high cost regulations has increased by 70 percent since 2001. And at the end of 2007, another 3,882 regulations were already at different stages of implementation. 757 of the new regulations target small businesses.
The fact is that during this Republican administration, there has been a significant increase in regulations and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, was just over 14,000 since 2001 during the Bush Republican administration. The total number of pages of regulations on the books is over 130,000 in 201 volumes and takes up 20 feet of shelf space. There were over 3,000 pages pending at the end of the Bush administration and Harry Reid has bullied a bill with another over 1,300 pages through the Senate. This has increased from 55,000 in 1970 during Republican and Democratic administrations.
According to George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, and Homeland Security’s own estimate, its regulations alone cost the economy more than $4 billion a year and the actual cost is much higher when you consider the total effect that adversely affected industries have on other industries. The Office of Management and Budget lists the categories of regulation as either social, economic, and process. The Congressional Review Act passed in 1996 allows Congress 60 days to review all new regulations imposed by regulatory agencies for cost, legality, fairness, and economic impact before a new regulation goes into effect.
As you can guess, this is not enough time to pour through 135,000 pages of federal regulations in three major areas and adequately discover what adverse effects one regulation my have on all three areas, let alone evaluate the thousands of new regulations that are subject to review at any one time. Add to this the effect that a new federal regulation might have on state regulations when California alone has over 300,000 pages of regulations effecting business alone plus another entire volume of building code regulations. In order to do this, legislators would have to be experts on all industries when they clearly are not expert on one and each Senator and Congress member would have to be familiar with all state, county, and local regulations in the areas that they represent. As we have seen in the deficit and transportation, airline, telecommunications, housing, and auto industries, this can only lead to disastrous results.
To continue to take on an impossible task can only lead to failure. This is why the Constitution, which does not give our federal public servants the power to regulate, assigns less complicated tasks to our legislators. They only have to protect our liberty, rights, and property, defend our borders, and be friends with other countries. None of these things are being accomplished while they are subject to the pressure and exposure to corruption that is generated by special interests.
The free market that allowed this country to become the strongest economic power in the world, also clearly, no longer exists. It accomplishes nothing to mistakenly rail against a myth that will soon, along with the Constitution, become a legend.
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