Cost of New Regulations Issued by Biden Administration, Many Aimed at Climate Change, Crosses Into ‘Uncharted Territory’
If Biden’s regulatory costs were a country, the American Action Forum notes, ‘its gross domestic product would rank 17th in the world.’
The Biden administration’s regulations costs are crossing into “truly uncharted territory,” according to one fiscal watchdog group.
That’s the outlook from the American Action Forum’s “Week in Regulation” series, which says there “has never been a week quite like this” in its 13 years of tracking new regulations issued by agencies at Washington.
“Thanks primarily to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) latest tailpipe emissions rule for passenger vehicles, Biden Administration regulatory costs have crossed into trillion-dollar (with a T) territory,” the report notes. “Across all rulemakings, agencies published $875.3 billion in total costs and added 4.7 million annual paperwork burden hours.”
The review tracked the regulatory activity of the Biden, Trump, and Obama administrations from their inauguration day to April 19 of the presidents’ fourth year and found that President Biden’s final rule costs are $1.37 trillion — President Trump’s were $30.1 billion and President Obama’s were $303.1 billion.
The Biden administration had fewer total final rules but its 267 million in paperwork burden hours outpaced the previous administrations.
“It was one thing,” the review notes, “for the current administration to surpass the first-term total for the Obama Administration. This past week’s total alone, however, nearly matched the entire Obama presidency. For perspective, if ‘Biden Administration Regulatory Costs’ were a country, its gross domestic product would rank 17th in the world, just behind Indonesia.”
The Biden administration’s stringent emissions standards are driving some of the enormous costs of the new regulations. Other significant rules, the review notes, are the Department of Energy’s efficiency standards for general service lamps and the Department of Labor’s latest regulations on miner exposure standards.
“It is simply a jaw-dropping regulatory record,” a separate American Action Forum analysis notes, adding that “the Biden climate agenda is driving this regulatory tsunami.”
“Regulations are taxes in another form,” the American Action Forum notes. “If President Biden had imposed $1.3 trillion in taxes by executive fiat, the media would be aflame.”
