Federal Red Tape Costs 780,000 Jobs
Federal regulatory officials imposed 3,807 new rules in 2011, an average of 15 each business day, filling 81,247 pages in last year’s Federal Register.
Unemployment in the private sector remains unacceptably high, but business is booming in Washington when it comes to jobs in the government’s regulatory “industry.” Functionaries are busily enforcing the 169,301-page U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, observes Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Non-Pentagon executive-branch civilian employment dipped 11.5 percent under President Bill Clinton, but spiked 14.4 percent under President George W. Bush and another 5.5 percent under President Obama from 2008 to 2010, rising from 1.28 million employees to 1.36 million.
While not all of these workers are engaged in regulation, 291,676 of them are, up 17 percent under Obama. Murdock cites research by Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who states that complying with federal regulations cost the U.S. economy $1.75 trillion in 2008, surpassing all U.S. corporate pre-tax profits of $1.3 trillion in 2009 — and that 2008 figure is likely higher today.
“Every dollar spent to mollify federal authorities is a dollar that cannot be spent to hire new employees, launch new products, or open foreign markets,” Murdock writes in National Review.
“My colleagues at Engage America have calculated that federal red tape has squelched at least 779,203 potential jobs. If these positions were filled, today’s unemployment rate would fall from 8.2 percent to 7.7.”
He points to two examples of federal regulatory overreach.
The Energy Department has imposed rules titled “Conservation Standards for Wine Chillers and Miscellaneous Refrigeration Products.”
And a Utah high school has been fined $15,000 by the federal government for inadvertently leaving a soda vending machine running during its lunch period, violating a law that nevertheless permits the sale of sugar-loaded sports drinks and candy bars during lunch.
“At least 25 percent of regulators should be thanked for their service and dismissed,” Murdock suggests.
“Those who remain should be instructed to combat fraud, disease, serious injuries, and untimely deaths. Beyond that, Uncle Sam should butt out of America’s vending machines and wine chillers.”
Newsmax.com
