Try this on and see how it fits...
This graph documents the number of pages in the Federal Registry from 1960 through 2014. Two points are especially instructive about this chart. First, note the noticeable jump in the page count from 2000 through the present. The count moves around the 80,000-page level, a peak only achieved for only two years back at the end of President Carter’s term. It is instructive that the period from 2000-14 of high regulatory activity is also associated with the two weakest periods of RGDP since 1960 recovery including both the Bush and Obama administrations. The GAO also reports that the rules promulgated during the Obama administration have been far more onerous than during the Bush administration. In its first six years, the Obama administration enacted 499 “major rules” across all federal agencies, a 43% increase over the first six years of the Bush administration. A major rule is one projected to cost the economy $100 million plus to implement.
And again...W has more than his fair share of blame, as you can see...
A second noteworthy point in Figure 1 is the comparison of the Obama period of a high-regulatory environment (an average of 78,880 pages a year so far) with the low regulatory
environment of the Reagan years (54,335 pages a year). The Reagan years were associated with the second highest RGDP recovery numbers, while the high regulatory environment is associated with the lowest RGDP numbers since 1961.
A second source of the weaker RGDP growth post-2009 has been the increased tax burden since that year. President Obama has made reducing income inequality a major mantra of his administration, and one tool for achieving that is raising the tax rate on higher income earners. During President Obama’s Administration, the top marginal tax rate was raised to 39.6% while the tax rate for lower income earners was lowered. In addition, higher income earners lost numerous deductions and exemptions, which effectively raised their marginal tax rate even higher. It may appear that the increase in the top marginal tax rate from about 35% to 39.6% is fairly minor, but this masks what occurred with two other key tax increases not captured in these figures. Two new taxes were passed to help fund the Affordable Care Act. First, the Additional Medicare Tax was imposed of 0.9%. For example, the threshold amount for married couples filing jointly is $250,000, and importantly it is without a cap. Secondly, a new Net Investment Income Tax of 3.8% was passed which hit those individuals with earnings from dividends, rental real estate, interest earnings, and other types of investments. One might argue that these tax increases were fair and needed in order to combat income inequality. The other side of the coin is that tax increases also arrest, rather than promote, economic growth.
This is all credited to Loren Scott.