WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Lee introduced a bill that reforms our nation’s regulatory system by creating a regulatory budget process designed to measure, and set an upper limit on, the costs that federal rules and regulations impose on the economy each year. The “Regulatory Cost Assessment Act” brings transparency, accountability, and discipline to the system by requiring Congress to reclaim from the executive branch the responsibility for the effects and costs of regulations on the private sector.

“Reforming our federal regulatory regime is one of the greatest challenges facing our country today,” said Sen. Lee. “Each year thousands of rules and regulations, issued by the alphabet soup of federal agencies in Washington, D.C., cost our economy nearly $2 trillion. These costs are borne by businesses – large and small – trying to comply with all the red tape, but ultimately they’re passed on to the American people, in the form of lower take-home pay, fewer jobs, and higher costs of goods and services.”

“Right now, the main reason our regulatory system is so onerous and expensive,” Lee said, “is that regulations are issued by bureaucrats in the executive branch who will never be held to account for their decisions by the American people. This bill takes an important step toward solving that problem by making Congress directly accountable for the regulatory costs each federal agency can impose on the economy.”