Federal regulations cost taxpayers trillions of dollars annually, with the average American household paying roughly $16,000 per year in hidden costs, according to a new report.
The nonpartisan Competitive Enterprise Institute released its annual Ten Thousand Commandments report Thursday. It shows that total compliance costs and economic effects of federal regulations exceed $2.1 trillion annually, with the Federal Register having issued 220,813 final rules since it first began itemizing in 1976.
As a result, American consumers have faced higher prices and lost jobs due to businesses passing regulatory costs onto consumers. The average U.S. household, without realizing it, spends more on regulations than healthcare, food, transportation, apparel, and entertainment combined, according to CEI.
In 2024 alone, federal regulatory agencies issued 3,248 final rules while Congress passed 175 bills, or 19 rules for every law passed that year. The CEI report blames much of the surge on the Biden administration’s energy, climate, and equity mandates.
“Washington regulations got worse under President Biden because his administration sought to impose progressive rules against energy and consumer appliances, labor, banking, online speech, and other sectors of the economy,” Wayne Crews, the report’s author, said in a statement.
Regulations hit smaller businesses harder than larger ones, particularly in manufacturing. According to CEI’s analysis, companies with under 50 workers pay an average of $50,000 in per-employee regulatory costs, versus the $24,800 burden on larger firms.
Additionally, the 10.5 billion hours federal employees spent completing federal paperwork in 2023 cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
The CEI report urges Congress to create a regulatory budget, require congressional approval and a cost analysis for major rules, restore agency focus on core missions, and scrap any departments or programs that are no longer useful.
“Congress needs to take spending policy and regulatory policy alike very seriously. It needs to emphasize regulatory oversight and transparency,” the report concludes. “Congress needs to limit not only executive power, but its own power as well. It has increasingly ignored those limits, but it does not have to be that way.”
President Donald Trump has made deregulation and cutting “bureaucratic bloat” a major goal of his agenda. He recently rolled back Biden-era regulations targeting the oil and gas industry, as The Center Square reported, and has instructed federal agencies to cut ten rules for every new rule.
