The Obamacare law passed by Congress was huge, nearly 1,000 pages long. But that was just the start; the law was followed by a flood of new federal regulations. By one calculation, for every one word in the Obamacare legislation, there have been 30 words-worth of regulations issued. This wave of regulation has resulted in ever higher premium costs.

This week the lawsuit over the definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) under the Clean Water Act (CWA) took its next step at the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. The parties challenging this massive power grab include dozens of states and business groups. In their filings to the court, the challengers spelled out the illegality and unconstitutionality of the rule as well as describing the corrupt and dishonest means the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used to rush the rulemaking to completion.

Last Friday Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York signed a new bill seeking to crackdown on citizens offering their homes for short term rental through Airbnb. The law would impose fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing a rental on the popular site for travelers. Why would the state of New York pass this law attacking people seeking to earn some extra money to help afford living in one of the most expensive cities in the country? The answer lies with the hotel companies, one of whose CEOs openly celebrated that his company would be able to raise prices in the wake of this law suppressing his competition.

This month, a coalition of 21 states suing the federal government asked for an emergency injunction to delay the implementation of the Obama administration’s new overtime regulations while the states fight the rules in court. These new regulations are an attack on small employers and job flexibility and need to be stopped. Many small businesses, which will be most harmed by these new regulations, are not even aware of the new compliance costs facing them starting December 1.

The Federal Register chronicles federal government’s rules, proposed rules, and public notices. It serves as a running tally of activity by the federal regulatory state. The record page count for the Federal Register is 81,405, set in 2010. In fact, six of the seven all time highest page counts have been recorded under the Obama administration. But the Obama administration is not done yet and in its last year it is on pace to set a new all-time record by the end of the year. This stands as a stark reminder of the massive expansion of the regulatory state under President Obama, an expansion which comes at the expense of the rights and freedoms of the American people.

The estate tax, applied to assets of someone when they die, represents a tiny portion of federal revenue. But for farms and businesses at risk of being caught by this death tax, the effects can be huge. If a business or farm is valuable enough to be ensnared by the estate tax, passing on this asset built and developed over a lifetime, or across generations, becomes extraordinarily difficult and costly, sometimes even impossible. But apparently the Internal Revenue Service does not think this situation is bad enough and has proposed new regulations which would make passing on a business to your children even more difficult.

Yesterday, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit officially ruled that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is unconstitutional, a criticism that has been leveled at the agency since its creation in 2010. The court found that so much unaccountable power was concentrated in the person of the director of the CFPB that it could not pass constitutional muster. Under the court’s ruling, the director now will be removable at will by the president, just like the head of any other agency. This represents an important blow for the system of separation of powers enshrined in the US Constitution.

On Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized new rules on certain types of increasingly popular new payment methods. While primarily aimed at prepaid debit cards, the regulations are so broad that they also include new mobile payment options such as Google Wallet, PayPal, Venmo, and potentially many more. The rules effectively seek to regulate all these financial products in much the same manner that credit cards are currently regulated, with all the paperwork and compliance that entails. The new regulations threaten to crush these flexible payment methods simply because the bureaucrats cannot contemplate that a business activity might be better off beyond the reach of the regulators.

American freight rail, while largely deregulated, is still overseen by the Surface Transportation Board (STB). This federal agency retains substantial power to regulate freight rail, powers that the STB normally deploys rarely. But these powers are seen by some as an opportunity to enlist the power of the federal government in business disputes, using government to extract rents to pad bottom lines. An example of this can be seen in the proposed “reciprocal switching” regulations from the STB. Unable to prove that prices that railroads are charging are unfair, some of their shipping customers have gone to the federal government to try to force lower prices through regulation, regulation which has been described as backdoor price controls.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration’s attempt to seize control of the nation’s energy infrastructure faced its latest day in court before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP), which would more accurately be described as the Creating Poverty Plan for its increased energy costs that fall hardest on poor Americans, is the centerpiece of President Obama’s global warming agenda. It seeks to impose massive regulatory costs on the nation’s economy in order to supposedly prevent less than 0.02 degrees of temperature increase by 2100.