President Biden has tried to blame surging inflation under his watch on everything from Vladimir Putin to corporate America. But scapegoats aside, the reality remains that the president’s policies have contributed significantly to the problem—and a new analysis exposes one overlooked way Biden has made inflation worse.
In addition to pushing massive, wasteful, ineffective spending bills that drove up inflation, the president has also suffocated the economy with unprecedented amounts of regulatory red tape.
The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) highlights this overlooked reality in a new report by Jonathan Ingram, Alli Fick, and Haley Holik that was exclusively provided to BASEDPolitics in advance of its release. It calls attention to the fact that “President Biden is issuing more costly regulations than any other president in modern American history.”
“The [federal government] published more than 72,000 pages of new regulations, executive orders, and agency notices in President Biden’s first year—a record high,” the analysis reports.
“Those new regulations were also far more likely to carry a hefty price tag,” it further notes. “In 2021, the Biden administration finalized 69 economically significant regulations—regulations that carry a $100 million annual price tag or have a substantial effect on the economy—more than triple the number finalized in President Trump’s first year.”
This isn’t even business as usual by Democratic standards. The Biden administration’s regulatory salvo against private enterprise added $200 billion in new costs during its first year the FGA reveals, four times more than former President Obama imposed in his first year.
What does all this have to do with inflation?
“When Washington, D.C. wraps the economy in red tape, businesses must spend massive sums on compliance,” the report says. “Every dollar that goes toward hiring lawyers, filling out paperwork, and redesigning products and assembly lines gets passed [on] to consumers through higher prices.”
“The Biden administration’s regulation obsession will only drive prices and inflation higher,” it concludes.
In summary, the FGA’s report reminds us why we must not ignore the hidden costs imposed on the public through the federal government’s regulatory chokehold on our economy. The Biden administration’s regulations are further hiking prices and burdening Americans at a time when we can least afford it.
You can read the FGA’s full report here.
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