“Red Tape Rising: Regulation in Obama’s First Term” reveals that annual regulatory costs increased by more than $23.5 billion during President Obama’s fourth year in office. This brings Obama’s first-term total to nearly $70 billion, a staggering level that is likely unmatched by any Administration in the nation’s history. And despite a much-touted initiative to weed out unnecessary regulations, only two major rule changes reduced regulatory burdens in 2012.
And, the report points out, there are many more rules to come, with an extraordinarily large number of regulations in the pipeline, including hundreds required under the Dodd–Frank financial regulation law and Obamacare.
According to Regulations.gov, 6,534 new regulations have been proposed in the past 90 days. Proposed regulations include everything from importing plants for planting, meetings of the sub-Saharan Africa Advisory Committee, solicitation of comments and more.
As a reminder, regulations already in place are very expensive and are suffocating to the economy.
When was the last time Congress and the President signed a law making us more free ?