Report: It Would Take Three Years to Read All the Federal Government's Rules

Patrick McLaughlin of the Virginia-based Mercatus Center released a report recently on the Code of Federal Regulations, which compiles all the rules and regulations promulgated by all the federal government's departments and agencies. McLaughlin says it is impossible to understand the rules by reading them. He concludes that since the average adult reads at a rate of 250 to 300 words per minute, it would take nearly three years (5,727 hours) to read the entire 103 million word code (2012 edition, updated annually). “The American regulatory system has no working, systematic process for reviewing regulations for obsolescence or poor performance,” McLaughlin said in an email. “Over time, this has facilitated the accumulation of a vast stock of regulations. Regulatory accumulation can negatively affect GDP growth, labor productivity, innovation, and safety — perhaps explaining why every president since Jimmy Carter has recognized it as a problem. But so far, none of them has been able to solve it.”...more