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"Feds Added 4,148 Rules in '03"
"WASHINGTON -- While Washington rule makers made 19 fewer regulations in 2003 than they did in 2002, they still issued 4,148 new rules in the 71,269 page Federal Register. The cost of these rules can never be fully known and appear nowhere in the federal budget, said Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a new Cato Institute report. For the past eight years, Crews has analyzed pages of federal regulations in an attempt to make them more comprehensible in his report, "Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State." In it he examines the process behind creating these rules, why it's nearly impossible for the government to accurately assess what they cost, and provides a way by which Congress can rein in the agencies behind the nonstop rule making. The agencies issuing the environmental, safety and health, and economic regulations are themselves unregulated by Congress, indicated Crews. In 2003, Congress passed and the president signed into law 198 bills. At the same time, federal agencies have 4,266 regulations in the pipeline -- including 127 that are deemed "economically significant" because each will have at least $100 million in economic impact -- with no oversight or approval needed from the legislature or the president. This is evidence, said Crews, that unelected officials do a considerable bulk of the lawmaking in Washington. Crews found that the total cost of federal regulations is estimated to be in excess of $800 billion."A way to maximize congressional accountability is to require Congress to vote on agency rules (in an expedited fashion) before they become binding," he wrote. "Vital for true accountability, this step would fulfill citizens' expectation of 'no regulation without representation.'""