Washington is abuzz with anticipation over President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to slash through the mountain of Obama-Biden regulations, a pile that’s come with a staggering price tag. As the American Action Forum points out, Biden’s regulatory ventures have saddled Americans with a whopping $1.8 trillion burden. Compared to Trump’s $1.2 billion in regulatory costs during his time in office, Biden’s numbers are jaw-dropping, making even Obama’s $500 billion look modest. The director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, Dan Goldbeck, remarked on the mind-boggling figure, while noting that Team Biden is determined to push even more rules through before Trump returns to the White House.
Adding to the financial burden, Biden is on track to break a different record altogether: cramming the Federal Register with an all-time high page count of federal red tape. The Federal Register, for those unfamiliar, is the government’s manual on bureaucratic paperwork, and under Biden, it’s already reached 89,476 pages this year alone. With two months left and promises of further regulatory filings, Biden seems poised to surpass Obama’s record of 95,894 pages. It’s becoming a race to the top—or, depending on how you look at it, the bottom—in bureaucratic excess.
With this barrage of new rules, conservative voices are calling on Congress to put Biden’s last-minute regulations on the chopping block using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). This handy but little-known tool gives Congress the power to cancel federal rules outright, and if invoked, it prevents agencies from issuing any similar regulation in the future. Sean Cooksey, chairman of the Federal Election Commission, has been actively encouraging Congress to take up the CRA, even noting that Biden appointees should be well aware of the ticking clock. He took to social media, urging Congress to give these regulations the boot, adding that it’s not just about repeal—it’s a one-time chance to permanently block the same kind of overreach from resurfacing.
Cooksey wasn’t shy in his comments to the media either, stating that Trump’s return offers an unparalleled opportunity to untangle the knots of Biden’s red tape and liberate both Americans and businesses from Washington’s relentless grip. He predicts that Trump, backed by a Republican-led Congress, will wield the Congressional Review Act as a go-to tool in his arsenal against bureaucratic overreach.
With a bold agenda and an eye on Biden’s $1.8 trillion regulatory mess, the incoming Trump administration seems more than ready to make good on promises to cut back the suffocating regulations and halt the expansion of what many see as runaway government control. And with the CRA at their disposal, Trump’s team is positioned to not only halt Biden’s rule spree but also ensure these rules don’t haunt American businesses again anytime soon. The countdown to January is ticking, and the paper shredders might as well be warming up.
