Late last month, to no fanfare whatsoever, OMB released its annual report on the costs and benefits of federal regulations. There's a reason that the Administration did not give the report any attention. The report states that, for the 10-year period ending September 30, 2016, the benefits of major Federal regulations ranged from $219 billion and $695 billion, while the costs ranged between $59 billion and $88 billion. Not a report that supports a deregulatory agenda.
Not surprisingly, the report qualifies the conclusions as much as possible without actually repudiating them.
We are issuing this report after a change in Administration, and therefore would like to clarify that OMB's reporting of the results of these RIAs does not imply an endorsement by the current Administration of all of the assumptions made and analyses conducted at the time these regulations were finalized.
Of course, it's been known for some time that the cost of environmental regulations is regularly is less than – not more than – what EPA estimated at the time rules were promulgated. None of this matters, however, since the President already knows that regulations aren't worth it and that any contrary information is fake news.
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