Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute shares with Forbes readers his assessment of the the rulemaking records of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
The year 2014 is not over yet, but what do you know, the old claim still holds with respect to total rules: President Bush issued 23,367 rules over his last six years. President Obama, up until [Dec. 1] in the Federal Register, has issued 21,506 rules, and probably won’t catch up to his predecessor.
Looked at another way, Bush averaged 3,894 rules annually, while Obama’s 3,584 will rise probably just a little.
That’s good news, but the story doesn’t end there, though.
With respect to the most expensive rules contained among the thousands—the ones that the White House Office of Management and Budget calls “economically significant”—the picture is different. …
… Turns out, when it came to the really big rules and regulations (as far as we know, that is, given that actual reporting is pretty dismal, even non-existent), Obama was always ahead of Bush, even back when he made the “fewer rules” claim. And things haven’t changed.
President Bush issued a total of 277 economically significant rules between 2003 and 2008, averaging 46 annually. We now know that since then, President Obama has issued 407—nearly 50 percent more. His average is 68 annually.
There was a pullback in overall regulations that many pundits and even the Washington Post noted back during the 2012 presidential election cycle, but even that didn’t change the picture.
Total regulations do matter, but so do costs and the trends in costly rules. Such things matter even more when use of the pen and phone and “acting when Congress won’t” has been promised.
