Kerby Anderson

Everyone agrees that we need government to regulate various parts of our society. In fact, the Constitution sets forth some of the vital functions for the government. But I also think that most of us believe there are too many government regulations. Peter Roff, writing in U.S. News and World Report, put it this way. “Existing regulations are sometimes unnecessary, frequently in conflict, and are enforced by bureaucracies that have lost sight of their original mission. Instead they seek to ensure the right tickets are punched and the proper boxes are checked as though they alone can guarantee consumer safety, economic competition and financial market stability.” There is an economic cost we end up paying to comply with all of these regulations. Think of the amount of time many of us spend in filing our income taxes. Now multiply that by hundreds and thousands of hours. You can begin to see one cost of regulations. And this does not even count the number of efficient ways we could produce a product or service if there weren’t government regulations preventing a simpler way of producing it. Peter Roff says “there’s no really good way to determine the total annual cost of the regulatory burden.” Some groups have tried to get an estimate on the costs, and they have done it in a way that drives the point home to each of us. In previous Viewpoints I have talked about the Cost of Government Day. This is the date on which the average American has paid his share of the financial burden imposed by the spending and regulation that occurs on the federal, state, and local levels. This date usually lands in July. In other words, you spend more than half the year working to pay for the cost of taxes and the cost of all regulations. It is time for Congress to study the regulatory burden that regulations and the regulators put on individuals and businesses.