Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce Business Journal Q2 2014 | Page 47

Business Journal
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fourth branch of
government
Orginally published on FreeEnterprise.com Published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
By: Tom Donohue

PART 1
To restore economic growth, create jobs, and lift the veil of
uncertainty hanging over every business and investor, we
must curb an unprecedented onslaught of regulations and
reform the regulatory system itself.
American businesses and consumers are being buried
under an avalanche of rules from a system that is
increasingly opaque and unaccountable. Since 1976, we’ve
added 176,000 regulations to the books. Federal agencies
are churning out another 4,000 every year. And the number
of “major” regulations—those with a $100 million impact or
greater—has gone up 80% in ten years, from 124 in 2003
to 224 last year. The size, scope, cost, and complexity of
regulations are reaching immense proportions.
Take Obamacare, for example—a convoluted, sprawling
piece of legislation that has spawned a flood of regulations.
As of September, the administration had already published
109 final rules governing the implementation of the law.
Together, these regulations total more than 10,000 pages,
which is eight times longer than the Bible.
The price tag for all of the regulations already on the
books—and not including the huge rules on the drawing
board or in the pipeline—amount to $1.8 trillion, or roughly
equal to the entire GDP of Canada. That’s $15,000 a year
per household, making it the second largest item in the
typical family budget.
Then there’s the cost in personal and economic freedom.
Today we have regulations to decide exactly what kind of
health coverage you must have … what kind of mortgage
you can get … even what kind of light bulb you must use.
And if a court hadn’t intervened, there would be regulations
telling you what size soda you can drink in New York City!
We’re not only concerned with the number of rules, and
the costs they create, but the process by which they are
made. Stakeholders and average citizens are being shut
out. Secret deals are being cut behind closed doors.

Data is being cherry-picked. Congress is ceding too much
authority to the agencies, who abuse that freedom by twisting
congressional intent to serve their own ideological agendas.
As school children, we were taught about the three branches
of government—legislative, executive, and judicial. But now we
have a fourth branch, and you won’t find it in the Constitution:
a regulatory branch that is potentially more powerful than the
other three combined.
We’re not arguing that we should abolish all regulations or
dismantle the rulemaking process. But, too many needless and
expensive regulations are clearly costing jobs and growth. How
we can reform the system that produces them will be the topic
of next week’s column.
We need a regulatory system that restores checks and balances,
ensures unfettered public participation, upholds the rule of law,
relies on quality data, and restores good governance.
PART 2
There are two pieces of bipartisan legislation before Congress
that would make sensible reforms to our outdated regulatory
system, help bolster our economy, and provide for better
balance in government.
The first is the Regulatory Accountability Act that would
modernize the Truman-era Administrative Procedure Act,
which governs our regulatory process. The APA was passed
before the creation of many major rulemaking agencies. It
needs an overhaul to deal with the current reality—hundreds of
agencies issuing thousands of rules every year. The legislation
would r