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12:45 pm CST - August 18, 2011
Posted under The Scoop
Regulation Business, Jobs Booming Under Obama
By John Merline, Investor’s Business Daily
+If the federal government’s regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined.
Under President Obama, while the economy is struggling to grow and create jobs, the federal regulatory business is booming.
Regulatory agencies have seen their combined budgets grow a healthy 16% since 2008, topping $54 billion, according to the annual “Regulator’s Budget,” compiled by George Washington University and Washington University in St. Louis.
That’s at a time when the overall economy grew a paltry 5%.
Meanwhile, employment at these agencies has climbed 13% since Obama took office to more than 281,000, while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6%.
Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute, found that between March 2010 and March 2011 federal regulatory jobs climbed faster than either private jobs or overall government jobs. (See chart.)
Regulatory production is way up, too, if you measure that by the number of rules federal agencies churn out.
The Obama administration imposed 75 new major rules in its first 26 months, costing the private sector more than $40 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation study. “No other president has imposed as high a number or cost in a comparable time period,” noted the study’s author, James Gattuso.
The number of pages in the Federal Register — where all new rules must be published and which serves as proxy of regulatory activity — jumped 18% in 2010.
This July, regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will cost more than $9.5 billion, according to an analysis by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.
And much more is on the way. The Federal Register notes that more than 4,200 regulations are in the pipeline. That doesn’t count impending clean air rules from the EPA, new derivative rules, or the FCC’s net neutrality rule. Nor does that include recently announced fuel economy mandates or eventual ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank regulations.
But what’s good for regulators isn’t necessarily good for the private sector, as compliance burdens impose ever-increasing costs on businesses.
“Our economy is continuing to sink,” Sen. Barrasso said, “and it’s being weighed down by regulations coming out of this administration.”
By 2008, the cost of complying with federal rules and regulations already exceeded $1.75 trillion a year, according to a 2010 study issued by the Small Business Administration.
Worse, the SBA found that small companies — which account for most of America’s new jobs — spend 36% more per employee to comply with these rules than larger firms.
Cass Sunstein, who runs the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, denies the regulatory upsurge, writing recently that “there has been no increase in rule making in this administration.” He also notes Obama ordered a comprehensive regulatory review in January that uncovered $1 billion worth of needless red tape.
But Progressive Policy Institute’s Mandel says this review “doesn’t go far enough” and that having regulators prune their own rules “has been tried repeatedly in the past, and it’s always fallen far short of expectations.” He favors an independent “regulatory improvement commission.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., is pushing the REINS Act, which would require Congress to vote for and the president to sign off on all new major regulations.
Not everyone in the Obama administration sees a problem. The EPA thinks new regulations can fuel the economy and hiring.
The EPA wrote in February that “in periods of high unemployment, an increase in labor demand due to regulation may have a stimulative effect that results in a net increase in overall employment.”
8 Comments
CWJensen
2:46 pm CST
August 18, 2011
A new Obama job program:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/18/new-dhs-rules-cancel-deportations/
Julie Reynolds
8:59 pm CST
August 18, 2011
As a Texas Registered Interior designer, I can now only provide cordless window coverings (ANSI)that prevent strangulation ideally where I will not disturb more that 6 sq ft of painted surfaces in a pre-1978 home potentially containing lead paint (EPA) installed by a person whose feet on the ladder are not above 6 feet. (OSHA) All the rules are for Health and Safety, but how do we do our work now without passing along the cost to the client for the scaffolding and fall stopping harnesses? BTW, I am a Certified EPA Lead Safe renovator. It is easy and does not cost more to use these methods for Paint, repair and renovation. It does cost more for Abatement and that is provided by another Certified person.
Christian Archer
10:08 am CST
August 18, 2011
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan
Julie, I believe you can relate to the quote above.
Government’s intrusion into our lives sends me the following signals. We, the government know better than you how to run your lives. We are here to protect you from your foolishness and also protect others from your foolishness. We regulate so that citizens are not constantly taking each other to court for various reasons because of their stupidity. We, the government are the ones with reason, logic and understanding and you common citizens are lacking common sense to rule yourselves. Hence……BIG GOVERNMENT.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin
“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” Benjamin Franklin
Eric Jenkins
11:59 am CST
August 18, 2011
Wait a minute. It says government’s regulatory operation is “third largest in terms of employees” in the US. Wow that’s a lot of people! So the GOP plan is to cut regulatory agencies and kill all those jobs? Brilliant! I’m sure laying off all those folks and pulling their paychecks out of the economy won’t have any effect at all. We should definitely balance the budget by laying people off….great idea!
Christian Archer
12:33 pm CST
August 18, 2011
Eric Jenkins, you must be for keeping people on the government dole. Think about this, whatever jobs the government is doing, those jobs can be done by the private sector better and more efficiently. Do you like government employees buying $60,000 toilets? Someone in the private sector would NEVER let that fly. It would definitely be a red flag.
Eric Jenkins
12:59 pm CST
August 18, 2011
Hi Christian. You’re proving the point. Somebody in the private sector DID let that fly when the sent the bill to the government. How can anybody that would rip off the USA by billing $60,000 for a toilet be trusted to regulate themselves? Without rules and regs many of these businesses would disregard safety and ethics for the sake of making more money.
Stew
9:10 pm CST
August 18, 2011
Eric, you are an utter moron. You have no conception of running a business. You represent everything that is wrong with liberalism; blind adherence to big government, a willfull disregard of basic economic principals and a complete misunderstanding of entrepreneurship.
Businesses take risks. And they thrive or they die.
Government seeks to reduce risk. And this is financed by those who would take risks.
You. Are. A. Moron.
Educate yourself. Start a business. You’ll then understand.
Eric Jenkins
11:59 pm CST
August 18, 2011
Hi Stew. I am well educated. I own a very successful business…and I don’t think anybody here is a moron (unless Rick Perry is reading this). I never even really considered myself a liberal, but you are certainly entitled to your opinions. I just don’t think the Tea Party’s demands that we balance the budget by killing jobs makes much sense in this economy. Government jobs are still jobs and no matter how much you might hate government, putting more people out of work right now is the wrong thing to do.
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