One of the favorite conservative myths of the moment involves the supposed “job-killing” effects of regulations coming out of the Obama administration. Today, it was evidently 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s turn to take this tall tale out for a spin. During an event in New Hampshire, Romney claimed that the rate of new regulations under Obama has “increased four-fold,” resulting in businesses being buried under a pile of red tape:

The level of regulation in America, every the regulators, the government, come up with new regulations. And they send them out. The rate of regulatory burden has increased four-fold since Obama has become president. Four times the amount of regulation coming out per year as in the past. And so businesses say, ‘gosh, I’m not sure I want to invest in America.’

Watch it:

This statistic has absolutely no basis in reality. In fact, it isn’t true according to the Romney campaign. When Romney made the same claim during an interview with NPR in September, NPR asked the Romney campaign for verification, at which point the campaign was forced to admit that “the Governor misspoke.”

Instead, the Romney camp told NPR that new regulations under Obama are twice what they were under President George W. Bush. Trouble is, that’s not true either, as Bloomberg News pointed out:

Obama’s White House approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, 4.7 percent fewer than the 643 cleared by President George W. Bush’s administration in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database reviewed by Bloomberg.

Later on during the event, Romney claimed that, according to an official government report, regulations costs the U.S. economy $1.7 trillion annually. That number, according to economists, also isn’t true. In fact, John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute found that the study Romney cited “contains basic conceptual mistakes and relies on extraordinarily poor data.” “Its results should neither be used as a valid measure of the economic costs of regulation nor as a guide for policy,” he said.

For Romney, using these outright falsehoods helps him paint the Obama administration as some sort of regulatory behemoth, smooshing small businesses beneath its heels. However, when actual small businesses are asked whether regulations are killing jobs, the answer is always a resounding no.

Even as Republicans and CEOs of major companies complain that taxes are stifling job creation, corporations have been sitting on trillions of dollars in cash reserves, at some of the highest levels on record. The New York Times this morning notes another wrinkle in this story, pointing out that some companies have been laying off workers at the same time that they’re spending billions to buy back their own shares, thus enriching executives:

When Pfizer cut its research budget this year and laid off 1,100 employees, it was not because the company needed to save money.

In fact, the drug maker had so much cash left over, it decided to buy back an additional $5 billion worth of stock on top of the $4 billion already earmarked for repurchases in 2011 and beyond. [...]

There has been a steady drumbeat of other companies laying off workers even as they have disclosed plans to buy back more stock. On June 23, Campbell Soup said it would buy back $1 billion in stock; five days later it announced plans to eliminate 770 jobs. Hewlett-Packard announced a $10 billion stock repurchase in July, and jettisoned 500 jobs in September after it discontinued its TouchPad and smartphone product lines.

“It’s an extraordinarily unimaginative way to use money,” said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. By buying back shares and lowering the number that are in circulation, executives can make their own “earnings per share” number look better, thus boosting their bonuses.

Part of the problem is that companies don’t see any demand in the economy, thanks to high unemployment, lack of consumer confidence, and austerity at the state budget level. But at the same time that they’re using billions to enrich themselves, corporate executives are whining that the problems in the economy have to do with regulation and taxes, and spend their time pushing for new tax giveaways that would boost their already high levels of cash even higher. But if the way that they’re employing their current stockpiles of money is any indication, corporations’ attempts to secure more through lower taxes should be met with extreme skepticism.

Today, the Senate is scheduled to vote on the infrastructure investment portion of President Obama’s American Jobs Act. Senate Republicans are planning to block the bill, objecting to the fact that it is paid for by a surtax that affects no more than the richest 0.1 percent of people in most states.

The Senate GOP, instead, is offering its own “jobs bill.” The GOP’s legislation, in addition to providing some highway funding, would cut $40 billion in discretionary spending and implement a cockamamie House Republican proposal known as the REINS Act. As ThinkProgress Justice editor Ian Millhiser wrote, the REINS Act would cripple the government’s ability to regulate just about anything:

House Republicans claim that REINS will simply provide an additional layer of congressional oversight before a federal agency can improve vehicle safety standards or reduce greenhouse emissions or streamline the FDA’s process for approving new drugs, but the actual effect of REINS would be to completely freeze much of the federal regulatory structure in place — permanently.

For one thing, while REINS’ chief sponsor claims that it would prevent new regulations from being filibustered in the Senate, the bill does not account for a loophole in the Senate rules. As a result, all but the most insignificant new federal regulations would be shut down completely unless they could somehow earn supermajority support in the Senate.

While the GOP seems to be aiming this plan at preventing new regulations, it would also effectively make it impossible to get rid of old regulations. Sally Katzen, a former chief overseer of the federal regulatory process, pointed out that “agencies sometimes propose eliminating outdated rules. But even these efforts at regulatory streamlining would nonetheless get caught in the REINS Act net, as deregulatory rules are nevertheless still rules.”

Former Reagan administration economist Bruce Bartlett explained this week that the GOP’s belief in deregulation as a job creation measure is “nonsense.” “It’s just made up,” he said. McClatchy spoke with small business owners, and found “little evidence” that regulation is hurting job creation. So instead of passing the infrastructure bill and putting Americans back to work on projects vital to the country, the GOP is proposing a nonsense solution to a non-existent problem.

Republican lawmakers have been raking President Obama over the coals due to what they call a “tsunami” of new government regulations. “Business owners are reluctant to create jobs today if they’re going to need to pay more tomorrow to comply with onerous new regulations,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Obama’s “excessive regulations that unnecessarily increase costs” just “make it harder for our economy to create jobs,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

As with most GOP talking points, the facts tell a different story. A Bloomberg analysis of regulations reveals that Obama has approved fewer regulations than President George W. Bush “at this same point in their tenures, and the estimated costs of those rules haven’t reached the annual peak set in fiscal 1992 under Bush’s father.” Indeed, the record for the most expensive regulations still belongs to the GOP:

Obama’s White House approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, 4.7 percent fewer than the 643 cleared by President George W. Bush’s administration in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database reviewed by Bloomberg. [...]

In the last 12 months through the end of September, the cost range of new regulations is estimated to be $8 billion to $9 billion, a decrease from 2010, according to non-partisan Government Accountability Office reports analyzed by Bloomberg…The record [cost of regulations] came in 1992 under George H.W. Bush when that total hit $20.9 billion in current dollars. In the last year of Ronald Reagan’s term it was $16 billion in today’s dollars.

We certainly don’t remember Republicans crying about the “excessive” Bush regulations.

More of Obama’s regulations may cost more than $100 million as compared to previous administrations. But many of them help prevent outcomes that would cost exponentially more. For instance, the Department of Interior’s new controls on deep-water oil drilling may cost the industry $180 million, but one oil spill like that caused by Deepwater Horizon could cost the industry $16.3 billion. Some of the administration’s rules, like those governing coal ash, will actually help create thousands of jobs.

The impact of these regulations on small businesses is incredibly minimal. In fact, of the 10,361 mass layoffs last year, only 61 were attributed to regulations. When McClatchy asked small business owners why they have been hesitant to hire, “none of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it.”

Former Reagan and Bush economist Bruce Bartlett

One of congressional Republicans’ favorite explanations for sluggish job growth is supposed “regulatory uncertainty” being caused by the Obama administration. “It’s really pretty straight-forward,” Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) has said. “We need to reduce the regulatory burden and the regulatory uncertainty that’s coming out of Washington.” “By pursuing a steady repeal of job-destroying regulations, we can help lift the cloud of uncertainty hanging over small and large employers alike, empowering them to hire more workers,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA).

However, Bruce Bartlett — a conservative economist who worked for both the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations, as well as for former Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) — wrote today that this theory is just “a canard invented by Republicans“:

For some years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has had a program that tracks mass layoffs. In 2007, the program was expanded, and businesses were asked their reasons for laying off workers. Among the reasons offered was “government regulations/intervention.” There is only partial data for 2007, but we have data since then through the second quarter of this year.

The table below presents the bureau’s data. As one can see, the number of layoffs nationwide caused by government regulation is minuscule and shows no evidence of getting worse during the Obama administration. Lack of demand for business products and services is vastly more important. [...]

In my opinion, regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.

As the Economic Policy Institute found, “a simple review of investment and employment trends — what businesses are actually doing — reveals that employers are not behaving according to the narrative described in the uncertainty story: Employment and investment trends are what one would expect (or better) given the trends in the overall growth of the economy.” As Bloomberg News put it in an editorial, “the charge of ‘creating uncertainty’ is a way to blame Obama for the U.S.’s economic trials without having to explain the connection.”

The GOP is almost certainly not going to stop using the “regulatory uncertainty” talking point. But, as the research shows, the public and media should not take it seriously.