Regulatory Burden

I'll never be your beast of burden
My back is broad, but it's a hurtin'
--Rolling Stones

Interesting analysis of levels and trends in regulation, particularly during the Obama administration. Primary method of analysis was to focus on 'economically significant regulations' -- regs estimated to cost greater than $100 million dollars per year.

Their chart of economically significant regs from 2001 thru 2011 (Bush and Obama administrations) appears above. There is a general upward trend, but the significant move higher commences in 2007--midway thru Bush's second term.

By eyeball only, the number of economically significant regs under the Obama administration is roughly 33% higher than those of the last two years of the Bush administration and about double the level of the early observation period.

From 2001 thru 2003, 28 economically significant regulations were adopted by federal agencies at an estimated cost of $8.1 billion (see Chart 1). From 2009 thru 2011, 106 economically significant regulations were adopted by federal agencies at an estimated cost of $46 billion (also Chart 1).

It is apparent that regulatory burden, defined by the economically significant regulations that are in operation now versus 5-10 yrs ago, has increased.

The authors also discuss the increasing number of pages in the Federal Register from 2009 -2011, stating that the 2011 value set a record. That felt a little too much like data mining to me, so I found a list covering more years. The numbers on this list are different, albiet slightly, from the authors numbers. Moreover, according to the more comprehensive source, Fed Register pages were higher in both 1980 and 2000 than they were in 2010, 2011.

Would want a more authoritative source before concluding much here. May need to count them personally...

After doing so (if/when), we'll post a graph of those FR pages for a big picture view.