It was revealed in a quietly released 2013 draft of the costs and benefits of federal regulations that regulations created in 2012 generated between $14.8 billion and $19.5 billion in annual costs. As the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University reported:
By the administration’s own estimates, the rules it issued in FY2012 alone imposed more costs on the economy than all the rules issued during the entire first terms of Presidents [George W.] Bush and [Bill] Clinton combined.
President Barack Obama has claimed to reduce the regulatory burden on Americans. Obama said during the 2012 State of the Union Address he had "approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his."
Obama also claimed in 2011:
What I have done—and this is unprecedented … is I’ve said to each agency don’t just look at current regulations—or don’t just look at future regulations … let’s go backwards and look at regulation that are already on the books, and if they don’t make sense, let’s get rid of them.
As the 2013 draft of the regulatory burden makes clear, 2009 was the only year during the Obama administration that the costs of regulation were less than under Bush or Clinton.