Regulation Hits Home

Originally published on Substack.

Most Americans do not wake up thinking about regulation. They think about grocery bills, utility costs, insurance premiums, housing prices, the permit that takes too long, the form that makes no sense, and the feeling that everything in life is harder and more expensive than it should be.

That is regulation.

It is not just some abstract fight in Washington. It shows up in the prices we pay, the jobs that never materialize, the businesses that never open, the homes that never get built, and the choices we are no longer trusted to make for ourselves.

The latest Ten Thousand Commandments 2026 by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s initial estimates that federal regulation imposes at least $2.1 trillion in annual compliance costs and economic effects, while noting that the true burden is likely much higher.

That is not some rounding error.

CEI estimates that the average U.S. household pays about $15,859 per year in a hidden regulatory tax. That amounts to about 15 percent of income and 20 percent of household expenses.

The report says that burden exceeds what households spend on health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services, and savings. Only housing costs more. In other words, regulation is not just a business problem. It is one of the largest costs in everyday American life.

The Hidden Tax

Politicians love to talk about taxes because taxes are visible. You see the withholding. You file the return. You know the government took your money.

Regulation is more deceptive. It usually does not arrive as a bill from the IRS. It arrives as higher prices, fewer choices, more delays, lower wages, and more time wasted navigating bureaucracy.

Businesses absorb the compliance burden first, but they do not keep it. It gets passed through to workers, consumers, and investors. That is why regulation often acts like a tax that was never openly debated and never honestly priced.
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CEI notes that its $2.153 trillion regulatory burden rivals the $2.426 trillion collected in individual income taxes in 2024 and stands at more than four times corporate income tax collections.

That should alarm anyone who cares about affordability.

Rules Replacing Laws

This is not just an economic problem. It is a constitutional one.

In 2025, federal agencies issued 2,441 final rules while Congress enacted just 133 laws. That means agencies issued rules at a pace of 18 for every law passed by elected lawmakers.

CEI’s Unconstitutionality Index shows the 10-year average is 22 rules for every law. That is not self-government in any serious sense. That is bureaucratic lawmaking replacing representative lawmaking.

And that replacement has been building for decades. Since 1976, federal agencies have issued 223,623 final rules. Since 1993, when CEI first began publishing this report, agencies have issued 126,536 final rules.

Washington is governing more and more of American life through agency command rather than legislative accountability.

Paperwork Is Policy Too

A lot of regulation does not even look dramatic. It looks like paperwork.

It is reporting, disclosure, certification, duplication, delay, and procedural nonsense that drains time and energy out of productive life. CEI highlights 10.5 billion paperwork hours from the federal government’s own accounting, the equivalent of nearly 14,983 human lifetimes.

That is not protecting the public. That is pulling talent and time away from work, production, and family life to feed bureaucracy. This is how regulation encumbers daily life. It turns permission into the default and freedom into the exception.

Real Progress, Limited Progress

The report does show meaningful progress in 2025. Agencies issued 2,441 final rules, the lowest tally on record. The Federal Register dropped 43 percent, from 106,109 pages in Biden’s final year to 60,917 pages in 2025.

The administration also used the Congressional Review Act aggressively, signing 22 resolutions of disapproval, more than all prior enacted CRA resolutions combined. OMB’s year-end accounting under Executive Order 14192 also reported 646 deregulatory actions and five significant regulatory actions, for a ratio of 129-to-1.

Good. Keep going.

But let’s not oversell it. CEI is clear that the broader aggregate burden is essentially unchanged because modest annualized savings are being offset by inflation applied to the legacy regulatory state. It also notes that Congress still has not delivered the structural reforms needed to make deregulation durable.

A good year of executive cleanup does not erase a century of delegated power, embedded mandates, and administrative sprawl.

What Needs to Happen

That is why the real fix has to be structural, not episodic.

Congress should reclaim authority over major rulemaking. A regulatory budget would force agencies to live under a cap just as lawmakers are supposed to do with fiscal spending.

The REINS-style approach of requiring congressional approval for major rules would restore accountability. Rules should sunset unless affirmatively renewed. And the White House should be required to produce honest aggregate cost estimates under the Regulatory Right-to-Know framework instead of letting the biggest hidden tax in America remain half-accounted for.

If Congress wants less regulation, it should stop outsourcing lawmaking to agencies and then pretending not to notice the cost.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Regulation is a hidden tax on everyday life.

Federal regulation costs at least $2.153 trillion annually, or about $15,859 per household.

2. Bureaucrats are making too much law.

Agencies issued 18 rules for every law Congress passed in 2025, and the 10-year average is 22-to-1.

3. Durable reform requires Congress, not just presidents.

A lower rule count is good, but only structural reforms like a regulatory budget, congressional approval of major rules, and sunsetting can truly rightsize Washington.

The administrative state does not just live in Washington. It lives in your prices, your paperwork, your delays, your shrinking choices, and your lost opportunities.
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That is why this fight matters. Let people prosper!