Regulatory Uncertainty Debunked, Part Infinity

Membership Ticker

You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you—especially at a moment like this. That's really it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a much shorter than normal three-week window, by November 5, so we can keep right on doing it. Please pitch in early to help us get there.

$250,000

You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you. That's it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a shorter than normal three-week window so we can keep right on doing it.

Fight disinformation. Get a daily recap of the facts that matter. Sign up for the free Mother Jones newsletter.

Bloomberg takes yet another crack at the idea that the Obama administration has unleashed a tsunami of regulations that are crippling the American economy:

Obama’s White House approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, 4.7 percent fewer than the 643 cleared by President George W. Bush’s administration in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database reviewed by Bloomberg.

….The average annual cost of regulations under Obama [is] about $7 billion to $11 billion, compared with the $6.9 billion average from 1981 through 2008 in current dollars, according to the OMB data….Those numbers […] encompass the expense of new regulations, and do not take into account the economic benefits of healthier children, safer roads or fewer industrial accidents.

….Of the 7,247 mass layoffs last year — those involving at least 50 workers — 18 were the result of government regulation, according to department data. Of the 3,114 mass layoffs in the first half of this year, 11 were related to government regulation. By comparison, 1,053 mass layoffs were attributed to business demand.

….“This is a perennial problem,” said [Sally] Katzen, a senior adviser at the Podesta Group in Washington, said in an interview. “When the Democrats are in the White House, the Republicans complain that there are too many costly, burdensome regulations inundating them.”

I’m not sure how many ways it’s possible to debunk a single meme, but in this case it’s a helluva lot. It turns out that (a) Obama has issued fewer regulations than Bush, (b) adjusted for inflation, they cost about the same as the average over the past 30 years, (c) this doesn’t take into account the benefits of any of his regs anyway, and (d) only about 0.3% of mass layoffs during the Great Recession were related to new regulatory issues.

In other words, Sally Katzen is right: this is just something Republicans routinely gripe about whenever a Democrat is in the White House, much as they gripe about deficits and domestic spending, but only when a Democrat is in the White House. It’s just a partisan scam. Time to move on.

UPDATE: I misread the Bloomberg piece and adjusted for inflation incorrectly. The Obama regs cost slightly more than the 1981-2008 average, not less. The text has been corrected.