Even before President Joe Biden unveils a new and costly regulation agenda in Tuesday night's State of the Union address, he has already raced past his two predecessors in imposing one of the most oppressive and costly sets of government rules ever, according to experts.
In a new report previewed by Secrets, the American Action Forum said that Biden's regulatory burden exceeds that of former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump at this stage of their presidency.
FIVE LIABILITIES BIDEN FACES IN 2024 PRESIDENTIAL BID
“At its halfway point, the Biden administration’s regulatory burden totals vastly exceed those of its two immediate predecessors and have done so across a markedly lower volume of rules, with $318 billion in total costs and more than 218 million hours of paperwork,” said the new report from Dan Goldbeck, the director of regulatory policy for AAF.
What’s more, he told Secrets, “I expect the administration’s regulatory pace to continue. For instance, it feels like in recent weeks, I come across at least one or two proposed rules north of a billion dollars in costs each week. Those are all likely getting finalized sometime later this year.”
Another report on Biden’s regulation push from Clyde Wayne Crews , the vice president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the president would open the “spigots” of rules because he no longer has control of both the House and Senate, which gave him a rubber stamp on his agenda.
“We can sum up President Joe Biden’s State of the Union in five words: More spending, regulation, and dependency,” said Crews.
Goldbeck did a deep dive into the Biden agenda and found that the Democrat has surged the costs of regulations in key liberal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Familiar items such as vehicle emissions standards (issued as related-but-separate rules from EPA and DOT) have been among the main drivers of the past two years’ overall trajectory. Yet Treasury’s rule on ‘Beneficial Ownership,’ and its mounds of compliance requirements, finally put that agency center stage,” said Goldbeck.
He explained that it takes time for rules to be proposed and implemented and that without support from Congress, Biden will need to go the regulatory route to build a legacy that he can take to voters in a 2024 reelection campaign.
“The political calculus further incentivizes President Biden to go this route. There are vanishingly few legislative deals to cut now with a Republican House, and his team will want to have some notable policy items to point to heading into 2024,” he said.
GET THE INSIDER SCOOP FIRST WITH WASHINGTON SECRETS
Crews also warned of a coming regulatory wave.
“Biden’s interventionism consists of the waging of domestic ‘forever wars’ advancing the progressives’ entitlement agenda, ranging from child care to free education to income support, all of which are likely SOTU speech material,” said Crews.
He added, “Most significantly, though, is Biden’s signature ‘whole of government’ campaign to advance ‘equity,’ which is the pedal tone for all the others like climate crisis and ‘environmental justice’ and further medical controls. To do these things ‘without Congress,’ Biden can exploit the federal leviathan’s sheer size and gargantuan influence in the marketplace via employment and contracting and its bullying heft in procurement as the ‘world’s largest purchaser’ (to the tune of over $500 billion in annual contracts).”
