President Obama loves to say that he’s issued fewer regulations than George W. Bush did. Obama does that to distract and confuse people because it’s both true and extremely misleading. It’s the cost that counts — the economic impact — far more than the number of regulations.

An illustration: One person may have twice as many coins as another person, but if they have four pennies and the other person has two quarters, then the smaller number of coins is clearly more significant.

Obama’s smaller number of regulations have a far bigger and more negative impact on our economy than Bush’s regulations did. As FactCheck.org noted early in 2012, “It’s true (barely) that Bush issued more new regulations than Obama at the same point in their presidencies — but Obama didn’t mention that his cost more.“

More from Competitive Enterprise Institute: https://cei.org/blog/obama-has-issued-more-economically-significant-rules-65-years-bush-did-eight