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Human
Events
Regulations:
the tax you don't see
By:
Lawson Bader and Ryan Young
3/10/2014
Government
spending—everybody’s talking about it. But unlike the weather,
everyone wants to do something about it. Last week, House Ways and
Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) released a comprehensive
tax reform plan. This week Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) made headlines by
questioning the government’s efforts to tackle poverty, and the
following day, President Obama introduced his $3.9 trillion budget
proposal. There is another area where government grows in the
shadows, which in many ways, hides government spending and taxation –
through regulation.
The
federal government spent roughly $3.5 trillion last year, but federal
regulations impose an annual economic burden of more than $1.8
trillion. And to be clear, this number is an understatement because
the vast majority of rules are not required to report their costs.
One
reason this gets so little attention is that most regulations are the
technical, dry stuff that most people don’t care about until it
affects them. For example, the business owner who is forced to spend
thousands of dollars to move light switches to comply with
Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules. Or the land
owner who cannot build on his property because there’s a rare
species of salamander also living there, lest he fall afoul of the
Endangered Species Act.
Another
reason is a lack of transparency. Many headline-worthy regulatory
stories stay buried in difficult-to-access government documents, or
are never disclosed at all. By way of contrast, in Congress,
legislation is at least subject to public hearings and open floor
debate. Lawmakers’ votes are a matter of public record that voters
can take into account. Regulatory agencies face no such scrutiny.
Government
agencies are only required to look at the costs and benefits for a
small minority of their rules. In fiscal year 2012, the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) provided cost-benefit analyses for 14 out
of more than 3,500 rules—less than one half of one percent. Over
the last decade, only 126 rules out of more than 35,000 received full
cost-benefit treatment.
One
could argue this is all by design. It is easier for policymakers to
hide unpleasant or unpopular policies from the public by regulating
instead of legislating, and we have seen this in practice. Last year,
Congress passed, and the president signed, 65 bills into law.
Meanwhile, agencies issued 3,659 regulations, which also have the
force of law. That is a ratio of 56 regulations for every law...
Read
the rest of the article at Human Events
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