How Can Trump Make America's Economy Great Again? By Deregulating It

Investor’s Business Daily covers CEI’s 10,000 Commandments,

Regulation: If you wonder why President Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” and roll back needless regulations is so important, a simple glance at the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual report on regulation will leave you with no doubt. Excessive regulation is strangling our economy.

The CEI’s “Ten Thousand Commandments” report for 2017 covers President Obama’s final year in office and, as the report’s author Clyde Wayne Crews reminds us, the 2016 data will serve as a kind of baseline for Trump’s time in office.

So what did we discover? That Obama’s last year was one for the record books. His regulatory onslaught pushed the total number of pages in the Federal Register — the government’s regulatory bible — to 95,894 total pages, the highest level in history and a 19% gain from 2015′s 80,260 pages.

And it’s even worse than it seems. During his tenure, Obama imposed 685 “major” rules, or rules that have a significant impact and cost at least $100 million, 36% higher than President Bush’s 505 major rules.

The cost of this is immense. For all of 2016, federal regulations cost the economy some $1.963 trillion, or about 10% of U.S. GDP, which CEI calls a “hidden tax” on citizens amounting to $15,000 per household per year. In case you don’t know, you pay this tax each and every year, whether the rules benefit you or not.

Read the full article at Investor’s Business Daily.