As I mentioned last night, President Obama is looking to start cracking that whip on getting some major Dodd-Frank action from his financial regulatory squad in short order — which is only going to quicken the pace of his administration’s already frenetic rulemaking record (one wonders how they’ve somehow neglected to realize that their enthusiastic introductions of new regulations could perhaps correlate with our stubbornly stagnating economy, ahem). The Hill piece that I referenced points to a study done by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center that says that the Code of Federal Regulations has grown from 71,224 pages in 1975 to 174,545 pages as of last year, and Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) has some numbers on exactly what that means in terms of dollars:

Here’s an unpleasant reminder of what that looks like in terms of opportunity costs. Ouch.

Given the expansion of ‘economically significant’ regulations, i.e. regulations that are estimated to cost more than $100 million total, the House has been supporting legislation that would make such regulations subject to a little Congressional review before they’re enacted. The White House, weirdly, has so far been unreceptive. Go figure.