Biden sets record with flood of regulations

President Joe Biden has turned the town red from all the regulatory tape his agencies have spit out this year.

According to two new reports, Biden has gone around Congress to issue a record number of costly regulations in part out of concern that he might not win reelection and wants to cement in his agenda.

“In April 2024, federal agencies broke records by publishing 66 significant final rules,” said a report from George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center. “This number is higher than any previous month during the Biden administration and is nearly five times the average of the preceding 38 months,” said the report.

It attributed the surge to expectations that Congress will review the rules and that former President Donald Trump, who went on a red tape-cutting spree during his first year in office, would do it again if he wins in November.

“If there is a presidential transition next year, the lookback period gives the incoming president and Congress a unique opportunity to overturn rules issued by the current administration,” said the GWU report.

Meanwhile the regulations czar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Clyde Wayne Crews, revealed that the Federal Register of rules has already surpassed 41,000 pages, another sign of the Biden team’s desperation to lock in the liberal’s pro-government agenda.

“An unsettling new norm for the past few weeks has been page tallies exceeding 800 nearly each day,” said Crews.

He explained that the urgency to push through new and costly regulations is aimed at getting them in place before Congress and Trump can reverse them. There is a time limit for reversals under the Congressional Review Act, and by putting regulations in play now Biden could beat the clock.

SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS

“Given that this is an election year, the Biden administration faces a certain urgency in finalizing its priorities among these high-impact rules before they become susceptible to Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions of disapproval in 2025, should the administration change hands,” Crews said. “The process of overturning regulations via the CRA has historically proven challenging, with fewer than two dozen rules successfully repealed since its inception in 1996. Biden would and has vetoed resolutions to revoke a number of his rules, but a new administration and Congress could in 2025 revoke rules he fails to finalize early enough this year.”

He added, “The Biden administration’s strategic approach takes no chances, aiming to safeguard its transformative rules from potential reversal. That is why we see a surge in fat rules in the Federal Register now, before a summer deadline.”