Regulation Policy

CEI Study: State of The Regulatory State

This week the Competitive Enterprise Institute will publish its annual report on the burden of federal rules and regulations, called "10,000 Commandments."

A few highlights from the report by CEI analyst Clyde Wayne Crews:

  • The Environmental Protection Agency is a premier issuer of rules: it plans to issue 430 of them in the next 12 months.

  • More than one-third of the EPA's planned rules, or 163, will impact small business.

  • The number of EPA rules affecting small firms has increased by 92 percent since President Clinton took office.

Furthermore, says Crews, during Clinton's first five years in office, pages in the Federal Register ran at more than 60,000 annually -- compared to 50,000 when President Reagan left office. For 1997, the count was 68,530.

The amount of pages of final rules -- in contrast to temporary or draft rules subject to revision -- rose 20 percent during Clinton's first term, with rules affecting small businesses increasing 10 percent in the past five years.

Source: Editorial, "The Regulatory Hydra," Investor's Business Daily, February 3, 1998.

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