According to CEI’s annual “Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State,” federal regulations have cost an estimated $1.9 trillion each year. That’s $14,455 per American household on average in “hidden taxes,” greater than corporate and personal income taxes combined. In 2019, government agencies passed 2,964 new regulations, the first year that federal bureaucrats passed fewer than 3,000 since records began to take measure in 1976. That’s still thousands of new rules passed in the absence of Congress, however, which passed just 105 bills in comparison.

“If Obama had a pen and a phone, then Trump can have a little bit of a meat axe,” said CEI Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews, who compiled the report, but added that Trump’s power in rolling back the administrative state faces limits. Trump can’t get rid of rules, he can only replace them, making it difficult for Trump to command agencies to forgo their massive power.

Independent agencies, Crews told The Federalist, were even worse, as the two-for-one rule applies only to executive agencies with presidential oversight.