Please pass on the mandates

Congress has rightly bemoaned the “unprecedented” regulatory push of this administration, but now the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has actually counted the number of new federal mandates and provided added weight to claims that bureaucrats have run amok. 

CBO wrote that the administration’s regulations are “significantly higher than in previous years.” Hardly a shocking revelation, but coming from the non-partisan CBO, this is damning language. 

CBO catalogued 129 private-sector mandates in 2010 alone, more than double the 2009 figure, and a record few “job-creating” presidents would seek to break. According to CBO, for every two bills enacted in 2010, there was one private-sector mandate. 

It shouldn’t take too many guesses to determine what triggered these new mandates: health care reform includes 14 private-sector mandates and Dodd-Frank Financial Reform legislation imposes 22. 

Indeed, Dodd-Frank will be a rulemaking boon for financial regulators. The Congressional Research Service and Bloomberg predict the law will impose as many as 330 rules over the next few years, in addition to 122 councils, advisory committees and other panels.

For perspective, in the past 15 years, CBO has identified 109 private-sector mandates whose costs exceeded $100 million. President Obama is responsible for 42 rules, or 39 percent of all significant mandates since 1996. 

The President’s rules should be familiar to most: 1) employer and employee health insurance mandates, 2) excise taxes on indoor tanning facilities, 3) new taxes on investment income, and 4) labeling standards for vending machines. Strangely, all of these mandates were part of the President’s health care overhaul.  

While the administration has led the way by setting a record pace for private-sector mandates, it has also treated states like derivative economic units, imposing 86 unfunded mandates. The previous high, according to CBO, was 40 in 2008. This figure will hardly come as a surprise to Governors who have been scrambling to comply with new child nutrition standards that will cost approximately $6.8 billion.

In the entire history of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (15 years) only 13 laws have contained an intergovernmental mandate. The President, acting with his Congress, pushed through 7 unfunded mandates; only the 110th Congress came close, with 4. 

Of course, “mandate” is an amorphous word that means little until a definitive cost can describe the law’s impact on businesses and economic growth. CBO calculated that the cost of mandates enacted in 2010 to be several billion dollars, but it admits these figures are incomplete and subject to the discretion of rulemaking bodies. 

Based on the American Action Forum’s calculations for 2011, the administration has promulgated more than $24 billion in new or proposed regulatory costs. That number represents only compliance costs and does not include the broader macroeconomic affects of reduced profitability, declining stock prices, and lower employment.

The EPA, a direct target of H.R. 910, represents a large chunk of that $24 billion figure, with roughly $3.1 billion in regulatory burdens. What’s surprising is that neither EPA nor CBO has placed a cost on the most onerous mandate: the regulation of greenhouse gases. If H.R. 910 is successful, Congress could halt the most aggressive regulatory push in EPA’s history. 

By Friday night the nation should know whether Congress is serious about reining in federal regulations. They can either let the administration treat them as a mere annoyance or remind the President that regulations won’t grow payrolls, or his approval rating. 

Sam Batkins is the director of Regulatory Affairs at the American Action Forum.