SO, WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE DAMN FEDERAL REGULATIONS?

Conservatives regularly allege that Federal regulations are strangling the U.S. economy but I've never heard of or read of any specific examples.   The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has produced a study of the costs and benefits of many Federal regulations and the results don't justify the conservatives' hysteria:

The study’s findings include (figures are in 2001 dollars):

- From 1999 to 2009, the annual benefits of regulations were estimated to be between $128 billion and $616 billion; compliance and associated costs were annually between $43 billion and $55 billion.

- Over that decade, the Department of Health and Human Service’s 20 major rules annually yielded $21.9 billion to $44.4 billion in benefits and produced $5 billion to $6 billion in costs; within those department rules, the 10 major Food and Drug Administration rules produced $2.2 billion to $22.5 billion in annual benefits and $900 million and $1.3 billion in costs.

- Eight rules from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services yielded annual benefits of $18 billion to $20.9 billion and cost $3.4 billion to $4.6 billion.

- The annual benefits of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 19 air quality rules were $77.3 billion to $518 billion, while the costs were $20.6 billion to $23.7 billion.

- The benefits of the Office of Water’s rules were $2 billion to $5.6 billion, while the costs were $2 billion to $2.3 billion.

- Three Occupational Safety and Health rules annually cost $342 million to $369 million and produced $242 million to $1.4 billion in benefits.

- In 2009 executive agencies established 66 major rules. Of those, only 16 rules were fully quantified and monetized in terms of costs and benefits by the issuing agencies.

You can find the full report as a PDF here.