Cass Sunstein’s Misdirection on Regulatory Burdens
The Obama administration now claims the president’s regulatory record is one of the best in U.S. history. Per a recent op-ed by Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Cass Sunstein:
Contrary to a widespread misconception, and in part as a result of close attention to empirical evidence, there has been a decrease, not an increase, in federal rulemaking during this administration. During the first three years of the Obama administration, the number of final rules reviewed by OIRA and issued by executive agencies was actually lower than during the first three years of the Bush administration.
As evidence, he points to data showing that 931 new rules were finalized during the first three years of the Bush administration, while during the first three years of the Obama administration 886 new rules were finalized.
This is not a complete list of new rules, but a selection chosen by Mr. Sunstein.
According to research by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the data show that Bush finalized 915 new significant rules while Obama has finalized 1,234.
The problem with Sunstein’s data is not simply a matter of comparing apples to oranges; a better analogy is comparing shopping at Tiffany to shopping at Target. While the number of items in your basket may be smaller, the whole basket of items is far more costly.
Mr. Sunstein further attempted to misdirect the attention when he discussed this issue in his only interview on the topic. He compared the costs of the regulations of the first three years of the Obama administration with the first three years of Bush’s second term. When you compare the first three years of each, you get a much different result.
Regarding regulations considered to be economically significant — defined in law as having an impact of more than $100 million — Obama has had much more of these. In Bush’s first three years, he finalized 151 new rules that cost at least $100 million; in contrast, Obama has finalized 230 new regulations costing at least $100 million.
More Sunstein:
In the last three years, unprecedented steps have been taken to promote evidence-based regulation. Existing rules have been modernized, streamlined and sometimes eliminated. New rules are being examined to ensure that the benefits really justify the costs.
This is very hard to verify, since the cost of the regulatory burden has increased at an unprecedented pace. CEI now puts the cost to our economy of the regulatory burden at $1.7 trillion per year, which is up from $1.2 trillion in 2007.
Apparently, the EPA did not get the message to use sound evidence, either. In 2009, EPA ignored its own experts that questioned its need to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant harmful to humans and in need of costly economic controls. Further, supervisors actively suppressed efforts by EPA experts to question the limited data used to make a determination that will lead to billions of dollars worth of costly regulations.
In September 2011, the inspector general of the EPA confirmed that the EPA issued its finding incorrectly. The EPA inspector general “concluded that the Agency did not complete some of these key requirements and recommended actions.”
How many of the Bush regulations were responses to 9/11 and to need to gather data on possible terrorists? If the number is significant, that wouldn’t surprise me, nor would the fact that some of these regulations proved inefficient. The question then becomes who has made the best effort to streamline hastily conceived regulations.
Don’t forget the governmental reorganization and creation of a whole new cabinet level department.
Better question – “How many regulations had nothing to do with 9/11?”
Bush was a Progressive, like Clinton, and his father before him. The difference between a Progressive R and a Progressive D is this:
Progressive R – One collectivist world government with America running the show.
Progressive D – One collectivist world government with the U.N. running the show.
See? Completely different.
And Bush ws no prize pig, either. We may never recover from his inept economic meddling.
Which in no way excuses the lying scum in Obama’s administration. They should all be shot. For Treason.
Easy John, suggesting that the Traitor-in-Chief should be executed could bring the SS (Secret Service) to your door!
I really wish more people knew about this guy.
Cass Sunstein is the real power behind Obama, the knife Obama hides in his sleeve to stab you without you ever seeing it.
The most arrogant man in the nation, and THE SINGLEMOST REASON Obama _MUST_ be thrown out of office.
At best, the administration is claiming to have reduced the growth of regulations.
Amedment 30 to US Constitution:
Section 1: The Federal Government shall be limited to a maximum when printed of 200,000 pages, double spaced Times New Roman Font size 12 for all laws and regulations affecting the general public. This includes but not limited to IRS, EPA, and all other agencies, as well as Federal laws such as Civil Rights legislation, Social security and such. To pass more laws that affect the general public, they must make sure that the entirity complies to the 200,000 page limit described above through repeal of other laws. Any law or agency regulation passed in excess of this shall be void on its face. Not printing of the law (ie an electronic version) does not remove it from teh 200,000 page limit.
Section 2: Various agencies of the Federal Government, including but not limited to IRS, EPA, DoD, etc may draft internal agency policies in excess of the 200,000 pages as needed for the smooth running of such an agency provided those polices do not apply to the general public but only to the agency.
Maybe 200,000 pages is to large of a limit. I know I left out the margins.
You also need to specify the size of the pages. While the standard in the US is 8 1/2″ x 11″, there are far larger sizes of paper used for printing. Failure to specify the page size will see the demand for 24″ x 36″ (or larger) paper to significantly increase.
200,000 pages. That would only be approximately 100 Obozocare bills.
So how did the founders manage a constitution that could be fit in your jacket pocket and it was successful for so many years without a huge problem.
Seems most of the problems came about when lawyers got involved and turned common sense into thousands of words that nobody can understand.
Reminds me of the story about the lawyer that moves to a town where no laywers are living. Business isn’t too good, but he got a friend of his to open an office up across the street from him and they both became filthy rich.
Well let’s put some other perspective on teh 200K pages I suggested.
100 Obamba cares.
or the current system takes 31 tomes. At 500+ pages single spaced, that 310K double spaced pages for comparison. Or 50% larger that what I have.
or there are 170K single spaced 340K double spaced IRS regulations.
So while 200K seems like a lot, clearly we’d have to go to the taxes for everyone that were pretty much without exemptions – those take pages giving out goodies. Same with the rest of the Law.
It occured to me on the drive in that ‘Executive orders’ should be alowed their own 10K limit unless the order expires in 30 days, say a ‘we recognize April 1 2012 as nationional color day’ or some such issued within 30 days of the event. >shrugg< clearly it needs work, as the goal is to wrap up in tape the lawyers who make our laws.
It isn’t the number or rules, anyway. It’s the radicalism of the rules.
Sorry snork, it is the number, the rules, and the radicalism. They breed in such manner!
Very well done. It’s the mechanics that matter.
The entire Federal Register used to be the size of a Bible.
Now it fills a shelf 31 feet long.
An acceptable compromise:
The bureaucratic employees keep their jobs for a few years, and then we do a buyout for early retirement.
A moritoriam on new regs; their new directive would to be to eliminate 90% of regulatory and GSE code, with automatic sunsetting of all new regulations and laws.
Fed and State legislators should have to write, read, and vote on laws and regulations (laws) again. Themselves, not their staffs. Make legislation part-time and they would have to live under what they write.
One Midwest mayor simply spent his term with his staff going through the govt services directory, with a phone book on the desk; anything that could be done by local merchants found in the phone book was eliminated. Balanced budgets in a few months, revived and reignited the city’s economy.
Unfortunately, most city unions work like my own; any proposal must be decided upon while at the meeting. Our mayor can’t take it home and study it at length.
That’s a bylaw that must be scrapped. Just one of many.
Pipe dream, I know, but it can be done.
Politics has nothing to do with governance, it’s all image management now.
I’d love to know what mayor that was and was he reelected? It’s a great political point for any conservative Tea-Party candidate running this fall: “This worked in __; it can work here! And it will be an economic boom to local merchants.”
Mr. Morse cites (and references — good for him) some useful sources today. The “Ten Thousand Commandments” reference, though, was not among his best. Oh, the citation was excellent in that it pointed to a page where the 10KC report could be downloaded, but visitors to that page have to do some proverbial digging to find the report itself.
Readers interested in a much wider range of regulatory damage citations – including that not-so-easy-to-locate report cited by Mr. Morse – are invited to visit Another Slow News Day’s blog page devoted to the myriad choking regulations endemic to liberalism in general and Obamism in particular.
http://anotherslownewsday.wordpress.com/liberalism-regulation/
Dozens of related topics are also available from ASND’s Update Topics menu tree.
You gotta love these spinmeisters. The closest they come to truth is half-truths. They are rebranding the “personal mandate” as the “personal responsibility” clause and now they are trying to say that mandate is bipartisan because the Heritage Foundation thought it up a couple of decades ago. They also say their support of Israel is unwavering, yet in a recent State Department briefing, the spokeswoman couldn’t be made to say that Jerusalem is the capitol of Israel (it is, per official U.S. position). Obama tries to make a joke of the missile defense gaffe. They demagogue the GOP budget and call taking a vote on Obama’s budget a “gimmick”. This is what “open and transparent” looks like to our socialist-in-chief. Folks, they don’t just think we’re stupid, they’re banking on it.
I personally think that Sunstein is mentally ill. And so does every one in my law office. As is a really mentally ill person who should be removed from the cockpit.And this is no exaggeration.
Gun Free Zones – 1/2 Hour News Hour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7pGt_O1uM8