Rewards and Risks of a Federal Regulatory Budget (Part 1)

Clyde Wayne Crews

Our case for capping and “budgeting” regulatory costs across federal agencies opens by asserting that that, perhaps apart from certain raw compliance and paperwork burdens, tabulating the subjective and indirect costs of regulations experienced at the individual level and economy-wide is impossible. As Nobel laureate economist James M. Buchanan counseled, there are no “objectively identifiable magnitudes” available to the third‑party regulator: “Cost cannot be measured by someone other than the decision-maker because there is no way that subjective experience can be directly observed.”

Still, let’s acknowledge what we have. Recent verdicts include: a few tens of billions annually for a non-representative few dozen rules that the federal government reluctantly acknowledges impose costs; a $2.028 trillion estimate from the National Association of Manufacturers; this author’s own $1.9 trillion placeholder; and a study concluding the economy weighs some $4 trillion less annually than it otherwise would had regulatory burdens remained constant since 1980......To Read More....