Opportunity Denied: How overregulation harms minorities
These numerous examples are anything but isolated incidents and are the rule with respect to the paralysis in our regulatory system, not the exception. Studies from organizations and think tanks across the political spectrum have conclusively demonstrated that regulatory delay is the current norm. For example, the R Street Institute, a conservative libertarian think tank, released a study this summer that looked at all of the regulations that Congress had required over the last twenty years and where Congress had mandated that agencies meet rulemaking deadlines. The results of the study are astounding and should be deeply troubling for members of Congress. According to the study, federal agencies have only been able to meet half of the rulemaking deadlines that Congress has set out over the last twenty years. In other words, agencies have been unable to comply with congressional deadlines, in other words the law, an astonishing fifty percent of the time.
