Obama's new EPA rules = 800,000+ job loss disaster

[Mr. H.]

...“the annual cost of federal regulations in the United States increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008, a 3% real increase over five years, to about 14% of U.S. national income.”

More Regulation: "Great for Lawyers and Accountants," Bad For Business, Says Frank Holmes

And that's before Congress passed the sweeping health care law and the new 2,300 page Dodd-Frank financial overhaul.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

...“the annual cost of federal regulations in the United States increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008, a 3% real increase over five years, to about 14% of U.S. national income.”

More Regulation: "Great for Lawyers and Accountants," Bad For Business, Says Frank Holmes

And that's before Congress passed the sweeping health care law and the new 2,300 page Dodd-Frank financial overhaul.

Those costs are especially harmful to small businesses...

Overall, regulatory costs are 45 percent higher for small businesses than for larger firms, and environmental regulations are the “main cost drivers in determining the severity of the disproportionate impact on small firms,” according to the SBA. Compliance with environmental regulations costs 364 percent more for small firms than large firms.

Since the vast majority of American businesses are small, the effect these regulations have on job creation and the broader economy is enormously negative

Nor...

is the effect of environmental legislation being properly considered. President Reagan signed an executive order in 1987 requiring federal agencies to perform a federalism impact study assessing how proposed new rules would affect different areas of the country.

But the Government Accountability Office found that of the 1,914 rules the EPA passed between 1996 and 1998, the agency didn’t do one federalism impact study.

Worst of all,...

despite all the rules and regulations, they don’t appear to achieve one of the singular goals of the environmental movement: to make Americans safer and healthier.

A paper by the American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, “Do Federal Regulations Reduce Mortality?” looked at the effect of 24 health, safety and environmental regulations passed in the 1990s.

The authors concluded that the EPA was responsible for six of the eight worst regulations. All six of these EPA regulations were intended to reduce exposure to carcinogens, yet the authors concluded they all actually raised mortality risks. On net, the EPA regulations examined may have actually cost 97 lives. (not counting auto fatalities)

A 2003 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study found that a 100-pound reduction in vehicle weight increases the estimated fatality rate as much as 5.6 percent for cars weighing less than 2,950 pounds, 4.7 percent for heavier cars weighing more than 2,950 pounds and 3 percent for light trucks.

“Between model years 1996 and 1999, these rates translated into additional traffic fatalities of 13,608 for light cars, 10,884 for heavier cars and 14,705 for light trucks,” observes the National Center for Public Policy Research

So...where are all the greenies to answer this question....

"If ill-considered environmental regulation costs each taxpayer thousands of dollars, hamstrings small businesses, often exceeds its legal authority and even costs lives — why do we have so much of it?"



Read more at the Washington Examiner: SPECIAL REPORT: Big Green regulations suffocate jobs, economic growth | Washington Examiner