State and local governments have spent more than $35 billion and 75.5 million paperwork hours enforcing laws signed by President Barack Obama — with the Affordable Care Act eating up $880 million and 27.1 million hours alone, according to a report released Friday.
And with other parts of Obamacare taking effect soon and
new EPA regulations on small streams, tributaries, and wetlands issued last week, "these burdens will only escalate," the American Action Forum (AAF) said in its report.
States "often have to carry the heaviest load dealing with federal requirements," concluded Sam Batkins, the organization's director of regulatory policy, concluded. "At $35 billion and more than 75 million hours from the Obama administration alone, there is a reason that many states employ hundreds of compliance personnel dedicated to navigating red tape.
"It's unlikely that these burdens will dissipate soon," he said.
President Obama signed both Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank banking reform legislation into law in 2010, imposing 86 unfunded federal requirements on states, according to the report.
However, seven other mandates to both laws have since been imposed beyond the statutory minimum — and those are costing states $77 million a year, the report says.
Overall, the AAF found that federal laws now require more than 9,200 paperwork requirements, with over 1,900 directly affecting states.
Focusing more specifically on those laws that require more than one million paperwork hours, the group found 78 requirements — for a time burden of 419 million hours, and a cost of $2.2 billion to states every year.
Obamacare "has played an outsized role driving up burdens for the states," Batkins said in the report. "The new burdens on local governments are tremendous," even for those who did not expand Medicaid services for low-income residents and seniors.
Six Obamacare paperwork requirements impose more than one million paperwork hours each on local governments. It totals out to 27.1 million hours and a cost of $880 million.
One of the Affordable Care Act requirements imposes 12.8 million hours of paperwork, for a total of $336.9 million every year, according to the report.
Per state, that breaks down to 251,000 paperwork hours and $6.6 million each year, the AAF said.
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