Twenty Years of Non-Stop Regulation

Ten Thousand Commandments have given way to more than a million.

By Wayne Crews & Ryan Young

Twenty years ago saw the release of the first edition of Ten Thousand Commandments, an annual report that tracks the cost and scope of the federal regulatory state. It’s been a very busy two decades for Washington, with 81,883 new regulations hitting the books during that time. That’s a new regulation every two hours and nine minutes—24 hours per day, 365 days per year, for 20 years.

A lot has changed since then. Encyclopedias, landline telephones, and paper maps are things of the past for most people. But some things have stayed the same. As the just-released 20th anniversary edition of Ten Thousand Commandments shows, every year, agencies continue to issue thousands of regulations costing billions of dollars. What is new is that the costs of federal regulation are at an unprecedented level. The total estimated burden is now up to $1.8 trillion per year, or roughly half the size of the federal budget. This is larger than Canada’s entire economy....To Read More... Much More.....