The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is working to identify areas where the federal government can reduce costs, claiming total savings of $180 billion, including nearly $30 billion in regulatory costs. However, a significant source of potential savings in regulatory costs may have been overlooked: the Federal Information Collection Budget (ICB).
• The ICB represents the total burden of information-related tasks required by federal regulations, such as tax record keeping.
• This burden is documented by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), under the Paperwork Reduction Act.
• Current estimates indicate there are about 11,000 regulatory requirements that generate approximately 136 billion responses annually, taking around 11.5 billion hours and costing around $200 billion.
• The average time for each response is reported as just 5 minutes, which seems implausible; many regulatory tasks likely take significantly longer.
• If the average time required were increased to even half an hour, the total annual cost would exceed $1 trillion, and if it were an hour, it could be around $2 trillion.
• Current agency estimates of regulatory burdens are considered underreported, misleading Congress about the true costs imposed on the American public.
The current calculations regarding the costs of regulatory burdens are significantly underestimated. It is suggested that DOGE investigate these discrepancies further, as the real financial impact on citizens is likely much larger than reported, warranting congressional scrutiny.
https://www.cfact.org/2025/06/16/doge-is-missing-a-trillion-dollars-a-year-in-regulatory-costs/
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