Only Congress Can Stop the Regulation Roller Coaster
Key Findings
- The regulatory climate shifts dramatically with each change in presidential administration, taking people and businesses on an unwanted ride.
- President Biden's last full year in office added $1.4 trillion in regulatory costs.
- President Trump's deregulatory efforts in the first year of his second term reduced total regulatory costs by nearly $150 billion.
- For every regulatory action the Trump administration has finalized, it finalized 129 deregulatory actions.
Overview
Spending on regulatory compliance has gone up and down with the changing of presidential administrations over the last two decades.1 But the overall trend has been to add more costly and burdensome regulations.
In the 17 years after President Obama took office, more than 5,700 regulations have been finalized.2 These regulations have added more than 1.2 billion hours of paperwork at a cost of more than $2.7 trillion.3
Even more than the added costs and paperwork, the back-and-forth, up-and-down roller-coaster ride of modern regulation creates uncertainty for the people and businesses that are required to abide by the regulations. People are less likely to take chances, and businesses are less likely to risk expanding, when the regulatory environment is so easily changed with each administration.
Only Congress can get the country off this regulation roller coaster and onto a smoother, more reliable path to prosperity.
The regulatory ups and downs of the three previous administrations
People and businesses are challenged with regulatory uncertainty because with each change of presidential administration, the regulatory landscape shifts dramatically.
Some presidents have a heavy regulatory hand, adding costs, paperwork, and complexity to business decisions. Even when a president pushes deregulation, the next potential president is always less than four years away from causing headaches for people and businesses. This ebb and flow can be seen over the last three administrations.
President Obama took a heavy-handed approach to regulation. He even bragged that he could work around Congress because he had “a pen and phone.”4 In his first term, he racked up nearly half a trillion dollars in regulatory costs.5 Over his eight years, these costs climbed to $870 billion, with more than 575 million hours of paperwork forced onto the American people.6
In his first term, President Trump delivered on a promise to end burdensome regulations.7 Upon taking office, he immediately froze proposed and pending regulations.8 He also issued an executive order that required agencies to cut two existing rules for each new rule and offset any new regulatory spending with deregulatory savings.9
The actual results of these actions were more than impressive. His administration cut more than eight regulations for every new rule issued.10 The Trump administration finalized more than 500 deregulatory actions, reducing regulatory costs by nearly $200 billion.11
Unfortunately, President Biden then came into office and took the regulation roller coaster to a new extreme.
He immediately issued executive orders undoing much of the good deregulatory work done by President Trump.12 He also changed the cost-benefit analysis of rules to inflate benefits and downplay costs.13 Finally, he ordered that the definition of a significant regulatory action be doubled from $100 million to $200 million.14 These actions paved the way for a regulatory spending spree.
Over his four-year term, President Biden increased regulatory costs by more than $1.9 trillion, more than $5,500 per citizen.15 Some of these expensive rules included student loan forgiveness, the school lunch giveaway, requiring climate disclosures, and limiting short-term health plans.16-19
Many of these actions were unpopular with Congress, even with members of President Biden’s party. Congress filed 118 disapprovals of major rules, with 11 passing both chambers before President Biden vetoed them.20 The Senate voted against these rules even with a Democratic majority.
President Trump has now entered office a second time to return regulatory sanity with an enhanced deregulatory effort.
President Trump has supercharged his deregulatory agenda
President Trump began his second term in much the same way he began his first, with a clear deregulatory agenda. He again issued a regulatory freeze to pause efforts to implement and finalize all proposed and upcoming rules.21 On Day One, he also signed an executive order that rescinded President Biden’s executive orders that unleashed the out-of-control regulatory spending.22
President Trump also went on the offensive against costly regulation. Going beyond even his first term, he required that federal agencies cut 10 existing rules for each new regulation they finalize.23 This order also required the Office of Management and Budget to use accurate and standardized cost-benefit analysis for new regulations with an economic impact of more than $100 million, restoring the threshold to the pre-Biden era.24 Finally, the order required that the total cost of all new regulations be less than zero, ensuring his administration’s deregulatory effect.25
These actions had a tremendous effect on the regulatory environment. By the end of 2025, the Trump administration announced nearly 650 deregulatory actions compared to just five regulatory actions, a 129-to-1 ratio.26 These deregulatory actions realized more than $200 billion in cost savings.27
Comparing the final full year of President Biden’s term with the first 365 days of President Trump’s second term shows just how starkly different their regulatory approaches have been.
In President Biden’s final year, he added more than $1.4 trillion in regulatory costs and nearly 80 million hours of paperwork.28 This paperwork requirement is the equivalent of taking nearly 40,000 full-time workers and making them file paperwork as a full-time job.29
In contrast, in President Trump’s first 365 days, he reduced regulatory costs by nearly $150 billion and paperwork hours by more than 50 million.30
President Trump is now looking to continue this deregulatory momentum throughout his second term. The administration’s future regulatory agenda includes nearly 1,000 deregulatory actions.31 This plan is already seeing results, with one final rule alone estimated to save roughly $1.1 trillion.32
Only Congress can create regulatory certainty and prevent costly, burdensome regulations
But without congressional action, all the Trump administration’s positive deregulatory actions could be reversed by a future administration. This can be seen by how regulatory spending has gone up and down with changes in presidents.
Despite the ups and downs, the general trend has been an increase in regulatory costs over the long term. The Code of Federal Regulations, which compiles the rules that businesses, consumers, and other regulated bodies must comply with, now covers nearly 250 volumes and 200,000 pages.33 These rules and regulations are finalized by a growing set of more than 440 federal agencies.34
Nobody can be expected to know all these rules, let alone comply with them. This is why action by Congress is essential.
To bring about more regulatory certainty and prevent runaway regulatory spending like that under President Biden, lawmakers should require congressional approval for all major regulations. This would ensure that the people’s representatives would have a voice in costly regulations, bringing more accountability to the process. It would also likely prevent any unnecessary, costly, burdensome, and time-consuming regulations from going into effect.
Just as importantly, this action would end the regulatory roller coaster’s ups and downs, adding certainty to the decisions people and businesses need to make each day.
The Bottom Line:
To bring certainty and reduce the regulatory burden, federal lawmakers should require congressional approval of all major regulations.
Overregulation is harmful to economic growth, adding time and expenses to businesses, whose costs are ultimately borne by workers and consumers.35
The occupant of the White House has a large impact on how harmful the regulatory environment is to the American people. President Trump took swift action to create a situation where deregulation is the default, turning $1.4 trillion of regulatory costs into regulatory savings of nearly $150 billion in just one year.36
The Trump administration has now cut regulatory costs by more than $1.2 trillion.37 But the next president could easily reverse this positive trend and blow past President Biden’s spending spree just as he blew past President Obama’s.
Congress can prevent this and end the up-and-down regulation roller coaster that American businesses and consumers have been forced to endure. To do so, federal lawmakers should require congressional approval before any major rule or regulation can take effect.
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