Larry Kudlow: The Biden regulatory state has clogged the arteries of our dynamic free market economy

Last night, we talked about the relationship of radical climate activism and big government socialism. I equate the two, meaning that the Biden administration's radical climate policies have used the big government regulatory state to implement their insane war against fossil fuels.  

Steve Forbes, who will be on in a little while, has called it "modern socialism" through the regulatory state.   

Now, the recent Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. EPA may put a big dent in the Biden regulatory state, because major economy-wide decisions, according to the court, cannot be accomplished through executive orders or regulators without clear statutory legislation from Congress, but the insanity of the Biden regulatory war against fossil fuels with resulting sky-rocketing energy prices, the breakdown of the electricity grid, the shrinking baseload power, reliance on unreliable renewables, near $5 gas prices, and all the rest is not the only regulatory war the Bidens have been waging.    

Their regulatory interference with the free-market economy and business is unparalleled. According to a recent economic report based on statistics from TheRightFacts, the Biden administration has implemented more major regulations — those with at least $100 million in annual economic impact — in its first year than under any president in American history.   

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Biden has issued 69 such regulations, compared to 52 under Obama, and only 22 under Trump. In 2021 alone, federal agencies finalized rules that entail $201 billion in net regulatory costs. That's three times those added in Obama's first year, and nearly 40 times more than Trump's first year.   

Economists estimate that federal regulations now impose an economic cost of $2 trillion each year. These regulations could subtract almost one full percentage point from our GDP each year.  

This should give everyone a pretty good flavor of Joe Biden's war against business in general, not just fossil fuels.   

His agencies like the FTC are going after big oil, or the Agriculture Department going after meatpackers, or the Federal Maritime Commission going after large shipping companies, or the FTC again going after big retailers and they have all come up with nothing. No price gouging, no monopolization, no nothing.  

In fact, remember all those evil gas station owners deliberately keeping prices too high? Well, I guess they just relented, because gas prices just fell 50 cents and the Bidens jumped ship from blaming Putin and are now crowing about the half-dollar drop in gasoline prices. Whoops! They forgot to praise the gas station owners for the big price drop. It's a terrible oversight.   

Now, tomorrow we're told President Biden is going to launch another executive order regulatory jihad against big oil. We'll see what he comes up with, but the Supremes just told him, "You can't do that anymore." Maybe he doesn't know about that decision?  

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What I will say is that the Biden regulatory state has clogged the arteries of our dynamic free market economy. We need to stop big government socialism. We're going to need blood thinners in order to re-oxygenate the blood vessels of our economy.  

We can do this. We can restore economic freedom and the cavalry is coming.   

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow's opening commentary on the July 19, 2022, edition of "Kudlow."