The New York City Health Department announced recently that it wants to ban restaurants from using partially hydrogenated oil, or trans fats, commonly found in margarine, shortening and frying oils and are used to make everything from pastry to french fries to doughnuts.

While scientists agree that trans fats are unhealthy, some people question whether the government is going too far by regulating what kind of shortening a restaurant uses.

The trend to regulate is not diminishing. Heartland research shows there are over 4,000 new regulations at various stages of implementation throughout the 50-plus federal departments, agencies and commissions. In 2005, it cost taxpayers $38.3 billion to merely administer federal regulations on the books. Remember, those costs do not include the billions spent to police state and local rules and government mandates.

Let's do the math. The $1.127 trillion spent each year dealing with just federal regulations is equivalent to 22.5 million jobs that pay $50,000 a year.

It is hard to imagine that our founding fathers envisioned a day when there would be restaurant cops in New York City testing cooking oil at over 24,600 food service establishments.

Don C. Brunell

President

Association of Washington

Business