Biden’s regulations come with hefty $309B price tag that is expected to climb

The regulatory tape that regulation-loving President Joe Biden has installed since taking office has cost the U.S. economy an estimated $309 billion, according to analysis from the center-right American Action Forum think tank.

“Biden’s regulatory cost reflects the 443 final rules issued through late October 2022, which required roughly 193,000,000 hours of compliance paperwork across the nation,” Fox News reported Friday, citing the think tank’s analysis.

“At the same point in time under the Obama administration, 639 final rules had been issued that cost the economy $204 billion and required 80,000,000 hours of paperwork, less than half the time required under Biden,” Fox News added.

Now contrast these numbers with that of the Trump administration, which “released 500 final rules in its first two years that saved the economy an estimated $3.4 million, and took up just 500,000 hours of compliance time.”

The bottom line is that, whereas former President Donald Trump’s Republican administration sought to weaken America’s regulatory burden, Democrats have sought to increase it on the basis that endless regulations are a good thing.

(Source: American Action Forum)

Indeed, Dan Bosch, the director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, told Fox News that there’s no reason to expect this administration to slow down.

“I expected the Biden administration to rival the Obama administration in terms of regulatory costs, but so far they have exceeded those expectations. The current administration’s commitment to addressing climate change through regulations — rather than new legislation from Congress — means that we should expect to see these costs continue to climb,” he said.

And therein lies the rub. This administration has shown itself willing to impose any regulation so long as the regulation helps push the American economy farther away from oil/gas and toward so-called “green” energy.

But this regulatory agenda has cost Americans billions.

“According to Bosch’s group, the largest hit to the economy under Biden was an Environmental Protection Agency regulation that tightened requirements for automakers to manufacture cleaner vehicles by 2026. The agency predicted the regulation will cost the economy $180 billion,” Fox News notes.

“Other agencies with notable costs to the economy include the Treasury Department at $84.4 billion, Department of Transportation at $16 billion, Department of Health and Human Services at $15.1 million, Department of Labor at $8.8 billion, Department of Energy at $7.2 billion and Department of Homeland Security at $6.3 billion,” it adds.

These regulations also pose a problem for small business owners who’re already overwhelmed by inflation and other negative economic news.

“Certainty is key for small businesses, and under the Biden administration, businesses are operating in fear of the next costly new regulation that will come down the pipeline,” Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican, noted to Fox News.

“As Main Street America continues to deal with rampant inflation and the consequences of the Biden administration’s failed economic policies, we should be looking for ways to make it easier for businesses to operate and compete, not inundate them with burdensome new paperwork,” he added.

Here’s the thing: This is NOT what the American people want, which may explain why Democrats are getting ready to be trounced in next week’s elections.

A 2017 Gallup poll found that a 45 percent plurality of Americans believed there was “too much” government regulation of business and industry.

Meanwhile, a 2021 poll found that a 52 percent majority of Americans believed the government was “trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses.”

Yet this administration remains hellbent on instituting an endless series of new regulations. The latest proposed regulation would gut the gig industry.

Although gig workers like Uber/Lyft drivers and freelance writers enjoy the freedom of working as contractors, Democrats think contract work is essentially unfair — a position that’s shared by labor unions, non-coincidentally — and want to eliminate it.

“The Labor Department has proposed a rule that would make it easier for delivery drivers, janitors, construction workers and other independent contractors to be considered employees, granting them access to benefits and federal labor protections,” according to The Washington Post.

“The proposal would overturn a Trump-era move and restore Obama-era standards for determining whether workers qualify as employees or independent contractors,” the Post reported last month.

The regulation would do exactly what the PRO Act — a bill that Democrats failed to push through the deadlocked Congress — had hoped to achieve: Force companies that hire freelancers to formally employ said freelancers.

But California already tried such a scheme through AB5 , and it resulted in companies laying off all their freelance workers, thus leaving the freelancers with no income.

In an ideal world, the Biden administration would back off and let the market function as it functions. But this isn’t an ideal world. It’s one currently controlled by regulation-crazy Democrats …

Vivek Saxena

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