The Biden administration has added a total of $1.2 trillion in costs to the economy in the first several months of 2024 from finalized regulations as the president rushes to protect his agenda ahead of the November election.
The cost of the new regulations is more than double those added in the first three years of Joe Biden’s presidency, which totaled $447.9 billion, despite adding only 187 regulations so far in 2024 compared to the 783 added from 2021 to 2023, according to the American Action Forum’s (AAF) regulation tracker.
According to a report from George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center, the Biden administration’s uptick in regulatory action is an effort to ensure that the new regulations are in place long enough to not be easily revoked if the president does not win reelection.
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According to the report, federal agencies issued 34 final rules in April that have an impact of $200 million or more, breaking the record for the most economically significant rules published in one month since at least the Reagan administration.
The rush is related to rules around the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to overturn rules from federal agencies within a “lookback period” of 60 working days before the end of a session of Congress — estimated to be somewhere between the end of May and the beginning of August.
According to the AAF, the Trump administration issued around 1,340 finalized regulations during its term from 2017 to 2020, including rules deregulating industries, costing $64.7 billion. The Biden administration has already finalized around 970 regulations costing more than $1.6 trillion.
Some Democrats in Congress have encouraged the administration to implement more regulations ahead of the election. The regulations include measures encouraging electric vehicle production, forgiving student loans, restricting “junk fees,” and various restrictions designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Trump signed 14 CRA resolutions in the first few months of 2017, repealing various regulations put in place near the end of former President Barack Obama’s second term.
The RealClear Politics average currently has Trump polling ahead of Biden by 1.1%. Trump is also polling ahead in several key swing states, including Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“This calculator disingenuously focuses only on regulatory costs while ignoring regulatory benefits,” a Biden administration official told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “These rules would save Americans more than $1.5 trillion in fuel costs, health benefits maintenance repairs, and more. No business owner would look only at the expenses of running their business and ignore what they earn: what matters is the difference between the two. Similarly, it makes no sense to look only at the costs of regulations, while ignoring their benefits: what matters is making the lives of the American people better, which is what the Biden administrating is fighting for every day.”
First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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