Let us put $216 billion in perspective.
The United States economy had a GDP of $15 trillion in 2011.
$216 billion / $15 trillion is 1.4%.
The Obama administration cost American citizens $1 out of every $100 in new regulations last year alone. Give them 99 more years to create new regulations on this trend, and there won’t be an economy to regulate.
Total US federal government spending in 2012 was $3.796 trillion.
$216 billion / $3.796 trillion = 5.69%.
So the Obama administration effectively created new costs of 1/20th of the federal budget… in the year 2012 alone.
This is just measuring regulatory burden. It doesn’t even touch the new taxes Obama has introduced with legislation such as the Affordable Care Act.
Now Obama will run the show for only 4 more years. Following the 2012 trend, he will add a cost to the economy of $1 trillion in regulations; 1/15 or 6.7% of GDP.
Increasing the regulatory burden is a very bad idea. Want to know why employers aren’t hiring new employees? Some businesses only make a profit of 10%-15%, which they can then use to pay the business owners. If you remove an additional 1%, 2%, or 3% from the economy with new regulations, those business owners now have no way to afford hiring new employees, as their effective take-home pay has been cut by a tenth or more.
The only way to create sustainable jobs – ones that aren’t paid for by the government getting loans from China – is to reduce the tax and regulatory burdens on businesses of all sizes.
Then we’d really be moving ‘Forward’.
