Cass Sunstein downplays the regulations by lying

"Cass Sunstein, the director of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has been shopping around lower numbers [about the increase in regulations that are strangling the economy] that selectively compare Mr. Obama's first two years favorably with Mr. Bush's last two. Administrations are typically most active on the way out, and in any case the Bush regulatory record is nothing to crow about. But Mr. Sunstein's numbers are even more misleading because they only include the rules that his office reviews while excluding the prolific "independent" agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission.

This means that if Congress tells, say, the Securities and Exchange Commission to write a new rule, it doesn't enter Mr. Sunstein's tally. So it omits, for example, some 259 rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reregulation law along with its 188 other rule suggestions. It also presumes that Mr. Obama is a bystander with no influence over his own appointees who now dominate the likes of the National Labor Relations Board."

WSJ Regulation for Dummies