This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 19th, 2011.

I'm Keela Brown.

President Obama wants a tough-nosed review of regulations that might hinder economic performance, but there are problems

with that directive from the President.

For one, that's already been on the books for years.

Peter Van Doren, editor of Regulation magazine, comments.

The President has asked these agencies to become economists

and examine the costs and benefits of everything they do that has a large

impact on the economy. Now of course there are existing rules that already

mandate that agencies do this.

And the track record on that has not been good.

There are many reports by agencies examining the costs and benefits of so-called major rules.

Those are rules that have more than an estimated $100 million of costs on the economy.

The most famous of these from an economist point of view is the EPA analysis

of the costs and benefits of the Clean Air Act, both the 1970 and the original act, and then the 1977 amendments.

And this was mandated by the Clean Air Act amendments actually of 1990, Section 812 of that Act mandated that the

EPA do an analysis of itself and just like President Obama is now asking agencies to look carefully into their records and see stuff that they're doing that doesn't make any sense.

And the EPA examined itself and then in 1997 published this report that said the benefits

the cumulative benefits of the regulations it had enacted as a result of the

Clean Air Act from 1970 to 1990 was 22 trillion dollars.

Yes, trillion dollars and this is in 1990 constant dollars. And that the bet and that the

those are the benefits the costs were only a measly 500 billion

...