Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies

Intellections

Contributing Scholar: Patrick A. McLaughlin

Regulations: The Secret Tax Holding America Back

America’s regulatory system is designed to continually expand, imposing costs that impact prices, innovation, wages, and economic growth. Restoring accountability requires eliminating ineffective rules, requiring congressional approval for the costliest mandates, and making rigorous cost-benefit analysis permanent.

Regulations: The Secret Tax Holding America Back

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Regulations: The Secret Tax Holding America Back

Comment

Published August 7, 2026

The Code of Federal Regulations has expanded from fewer than 10,000 pages in 1950 to more than 100,000 pages today, imposing costs that accumulate through higher prices, reduced innovation, and slower economic growth. Because the regulatory system is designed to keep expanding, lasting reform requires more than periodic deregulation. Congress should approve the costliest rules, agencies should conduct rigorous cost-benefit analyses, and a permanent office should keep regulatory reform on track across administrations.

Related Sources:

Read "The Four Pillars of Regulatory Reform" by Patrick A. McLaughlin here.
Read "Regulations as Infrastructure" by Patrick A. McLaughlin here.
Read "Unsnarling the Red Tape" by Patrick A. McLaughlin here.

Visit Patrick A. McLaughlin's profile here.

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The opinions expressed in this video are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.