Free Republic

Nearly 50 massive and costly regulations that cost Americans and businesses 53 million more hours filing paperwork and that have already put a $42 billion hit on the U.S. economy are being teed up for President-elect Trump to cut in his first weeks in office. Congressional officials and anti-regulation groups are tallying up some of the regulations the new president can eliminate under House and Senate rules.

Repeal them all.

President Obama has just set a new record for rules and regulations, his administration spitting out 527 pages worth in just one day, as he races to put his fingerprint on virtually every corner of American life and business. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the administration has just shattered the old record for pages of regulations and rules published by the in-house journal, the Federal Register. At 81,640 total pages for 2016, it ranks first and 235 pages more than all of those published in 2010, the previous record. What's more, there are still about 26 working days left...

Economy: When running for office, Donald Trump promised to reduce the regulatory burden on the economy. But before he gets a chance to do so, President Obama will likely add to those burdens with a last-minute regulatory rush. In a memo to her staff, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said that "we're running — not walking — through the finish line of President Obama's presidency." The memo is indicative of what's come to be called "midnight regulations." These are rules an administration rushes out the door just before leaving. The number of rules increased in President Clinton's last year, and in...

On this, the day after the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president (yes, he has already updated his Twitter profile), President Barack Obama’s 2016 Federal Register page count stands at a record-level 78,898.The Federal Register, so emblematic of Washington excess, is where the hundreds of Washington bureaucracies post their proposed and final rules and regulations each day.Obama will break his own all-time record of 81,405 pages even before December gets here. Of the ten highest-ever Federal Register page counts, the incumbent president will own seven of them.Within those pages, several thousand rules get issued annually, no matter...

Prematurely accelerating the implementation of fully autonomous trucking (no driver in the cab) seems like an idea that could be fraught with risk. While driverless long-haul trucks have the potential to increase economic productivity by enabling more cost-effective transport of goods, the technology is not yet ready for prime time. There is growing pressure, however, to make it a reality sooner rather than later – particularly as long-distance trucking faces a worsening driver shortage. At the same time, highway infrastructure in many parts of the country is clearly inadequate even for today’s traffic, let alone a mixed bag of driven...

Texas and 20 other states have announced a lawsuit to block the Obama administration’s destructive overtime rules, which are slated to go into effect December 1, 2016. With less than 3-months to spare, victory in the case would save businesses and workers across the U.S. from this dehumanizing and economically damaging law. According to the new rule, salaried workers earning below $47,476 per year must be paid time-and-a-half for work done in excess of forty hours per week. This is up from a previous salary threshold of $23,660. The rule promises more pay for working long hours, more money for...

Detroit Bikes is a new company charting a challenging course. “The bike industry is very competitive. There are some really big companies that are very dominant. They have a lot of control,” says company founder, Zak Pashak. Not that he’s intimidated. Pashak had run successful ventures in the Canadian cities of Vancouver, British Columbia and Calgary, Alberta. But then, he was creating music festivals and concert venues. So what would compel him to make a product in a competitive industry, 1,900 miles away from Calgary, in Detroit, a city emerging from bankruptcy? “Starting a business obviously has a ton of...

President Obama has implemented more costly rules and swamped America with more federal red tape than any other administration, and now he has set another regulatory record: his team has filled 70,000 pages in the Federal Register faster than any other president. Team Obama crossed the 70,000-page mark this week and is on schedule to print seven of the fattest eight Federal Registers in history, according to a new analysis from the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Vice President of Policy Clyde Wayne Crews. "Let's put this in some perspective," said Crews in the report provided to Secrets. "The day after Columbus...

How dumb do Washington bureaucrats think you are? Really amazingly dumb. Now we have hard data to prove it. Survey data from the polled group — staffers from the White House and Capitol Hill plus career civil servants and the policy community of lobbyists and others who work closely with government from outside it — indicate that the functionary class thinks of itself as our betters. Our bosses, not our representatives. They see their own judgment as being far superior to that of the rest of us — the people whose wishes they are supposed to be carrying out. Trump...

Donald Trump wants to more than merely decimate federal regulations: He told a town hall event in New Hampshire on Thursday night that he wants to wipe out a full 70% of them.

In the latest partisan escalation on the Federal Election Commission, a top Democratic commissioner has ripped a Republican commissioner's bid to protect books, radio and Internet media from regulation as "pitiful." Ann Ravel, a former FEC chairwoman, joined other Democrats at a meeting this month to block Republican Lee Goodman's proposal to explicitly expand the "press exemption" from regulations to books, satellite radio and Internet-based news media. In pushing his plan aside, Ravel said that she didn't have enough time to consider Goodman's proposal. Goodman noted that the proposal has been under consideration for a while

Economists on the left routinely appear mystified by the ongoing slow growth in jobs, investment and business startups under President Obama. But a new report from America's largest manufacturers' group suggests a big reason for our current slowdown can be found in one word: regulation. The study by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) shows new regulations over just the past year amount to a huge hidden tax on U.S. businesses... ...In the last year, federal agencies and departments imposed rules that will cost U.S. businesses $81.6 billion... ...don't expect a sympathetic hearing from Hillary Clinton and other Democrats on...

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) issued a study that outlines a roadmap for the United Kingdom's (UK) exit from the European Union (EU), entitled “Cutting the Gordian Knot: A Roadmap for British Exit from the European Union.” Authors Iain Murray and Rory Broomfield provide a step-by-step guide on how the UK can leave the EU. The foreword was written by the former private secretary of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Sir Mark Worthington, who noted that "the British people have chosen for themselves" a future where "they are firmly in control." He hoped that with 'Brexit,' the United Kingdom...

Tyrants throughout history have known that beheading their enemies and placing the heads on pikes at the gates of their capitals sends a powerful message to everyone else. Behave yourself as we dictate, and you may survive. Cross the king, and you are a dead man. Something very similar, but updated and taken to a vast financial level, happened to ITT Tech, the privately owned trade school/university. As the Wall Street Journal explains, it crossed the king (in this case, the Obama Department of Education): ITT Technical Institute folded on cue Tuesday after the Obama Administration issued a regulatory death...

Trucks and buses in the United States may have to be equipped with devices to limit their speed under a proposed rule issued on Friday by the U.S. Transportation Department which said the move could save both lives and fuel. The department will weigh setting speed limits at 60, 65 or 68 miles per hour for heavy commercial vehicles, but said it will consider other speeds based on comments from the public.

Portland has announced the end of a pilot program that allowed homeless people to sleep on the streets undisturbed by law enforcement, saying it created confusion because some believed it legalized public camping. The so-called 'Safe Sleeping Guidelines' policy will end immediately, but several other pilot programs that also were rolled out in February in the famously liberal City of Roses will continue or even expand, the mayor said.

The annual Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Unfunded Mandates on State, Local, and Tribal Entities is quite overdue. It is the federal government’s only report disclosing overall costs and benefits of federal regulations. How is it that the federal government meanwhile has no trouble issuing new regulations? Today the Federal Register topped 50,000 pages for 2016. That is a record pace. Last year’s 2015 Draft, appearing on October 16, was the latest ever […] The Final 2015 report didn’t appear until March 10, 2016. This is 2016, and Monday it will be August....

In hopes of promoting the narrative of a US housing recovery, one recurring thesis has been that as Millennials get older and start families, they will eventually leave their parents' basement and buy a house or shift from renting to owning. So far the facts have refused to corroborate this, and according to the latest "Housing Vacancies and Homeownership" report released on Thursday, the dream of owning a home just became even more distant. The reason: after staging a feeble rebound in late 2015, the US homeownership rate just tumbled from 63.5% to 62.9%, tied for the lowest print going...

Which profession requires upwards of $10,000 in education costs, over $200 in state fees, and 1,800 hours of training to enter: emergency medical technician (EMT) or barber? The correct answer is barber. In terms of time and cost, a prospective EMT can obtain an occupational license, required by the state of Michigan, much more easily than a prospective barber. For example, Baker College’s EMT certification program costs $6,600 and takes six months to complete. Completing a barber certification program in Michigan takes two years. This example is not to criticize EMTs or question their ability to do their job but...