Study: Federal regs cost economy $4 trillion in one year

Federal regulations cost the U.S. economy $4 trillion in one year, according to a new study.

{mosads}A report issued Tuesday by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center says the accumulation of regulations implemented since 1980 held the economy back by $4 trillion in 2012.

If the federal government had issued no new regulations over the last three and a half decades, the economy would be 25 percent larger, the study said.

That would translate into an additional $13,000 in the pocket of every American.

“If the cost of regulatory accumulation were a country, it would have the fourth largest GDP in the world,” the authors of the study wrote.

The Mercatus report does not single out the Obama administration but spreads blame across all presidential administrations since 1980.

The authors of the report analyzed government data from the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Amit Narang, directory of regulatory policy at Public Citizen, downplayed the study, saying it “shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

“A serious and balanced consideration of regulatory impacts would take into account the massive costs to the public when we don’t have strong and effective regulations, such as the Wall Street crash that cost the country 14 trillion dollars and ruined the financial security of countless working families and consumers,” Narang said.

“Once those costs of regulatory failure are included, the case for regulations that protect the public becomes obvious.”