Deregulation Nation: Trump Admin Killing 13 Regulations For Each New One
An estimated $33B saved so far
One of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises was to roll back Obama-era regulations and to lift a variety of restrictions put in place by the mammoth bureaucracy that is our federal government.
He stated in the lead-up to the 2016 election that he intended to eliminate two regulations for every new one. To date, the Trump administration is far exceeding that goal, eliminating 13 regulations for every new one.
The Washington Examiner reports:
“We’ve hit 13 to 1,” [Russ Vought, acting budget office director] told a Heritage Foundation conference on federalism. And cutting so many regulations, he added, has saved taxpayers $33 billion.
Departments and agencies including the departments of Labor, Education, Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency have led the war on regulations, according to federal reports.
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said that President Trump has a builder’s approach to regulations and federalism.
“It is the best kind because it is real and it’s born of real world experience,” said the former House member.
“The president has it because he had to go and pull a permit to build a building and deal with bureaucracy and doesn’t like that and knows why that impedes growth and impedes development, impedes creativity,” said Mulvaney.
In his article entitled “Trump deregulation boosting our economy – Here’s one example,” Steve Forbes explains this approach in more detail.
Two big things have been propelling the U.S. economy forward in impressive fashion: the 2017 Trump tax cuts and the president’s relentless drive to reduce unnecessary regulations, which are another form of taxation.
One example of the president delivering his deregulation promise came in late May when the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Railroad Administration abandoned a costly regulatory proposal issued by President Barack Obama.
The measure would have forced private freight railroad carriers to continue operating with two people in a locomotive cab. This proposed Obama, anti-business mandate was always wrongheaded, and its revocation carries important lessons for how best to regulate.
It is also a positive development for the sake of a U.S. economy, whose strength is increasingly connected to the efficient movement of goods. E-commerce will only continue to grow as businesses fiercely compete, and America needs a multimodal transportation system to support this.
. . . . The Obama proposal was not a serious attempt at promoting safety. Rather it was featherbedding pure and simple at the behest of unions.
Ditching the proposal underscores the fact that regulators should embrace outcomes – such as reducing rail accidents – instead of prescriptions when writing rules.
Back in 2017, President Trump gave a speech about deregulation, and at the end, he moved over to two stacks of paper. Each represented federal regulations, the smaller one from 1960, and the towering stacks from today (2017). He then symbolically cut the “red tape” and promised to continue with his deregulation agenda until current regulations are fewer than those in 1960.
Watch:
The video is cued up to the above iconic moment, but his whole 2017 statement on deregulation is well worth watching if you want to start the video at the beginning.
If you are interested in more details about Trump’s ongoing deregulation, the Brookings Institute has a handy deregulation tracking page.
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Comments
The downside is, even at that rate, it will take until well past the end of his legally permissable term in office to get down to a sane number of regulations.
We probably should be “killing” 13,000 for each new one.
The Sun will engulf the planet before they get through FDR’s legacy.
This is all for show. It’s the same game that Boehnor/Ryan/McConnell always play. First they pass a blockbuster spending budget talking about cuts when even the called “cuts” to slow down the breakneck spending increases don’t materialize.
For now, Trump just doesn’t have the power to even trim the bureaucracy and $33B in savings is just barely above $0 and has pretty much the same impact. Hopefully, when he is re-elected he will start ELIMINATING entire DEPARTMENTS (Commerce,EPA, Interior, etc…) and government PROGRAMS.
Until then, this is just playing around with phony, meaningless numbers. Instead for the 13 to 1 ratio, he could get a lot more results by eliminating the EPA alone.
Down votes? Then let it be noted that downsizing government is not a popular issue around here. Ever bigger government funded by an ever larger national debt that keeps growing at accelerated rate is fine so long as 13 regulations are deleted for every new one added.
What difference does it make to delete regulations when no one is enforcing the laws anyway? Government is TOO BIG!!! It should be SHRINKING!!!
So you know that neither the current house nor the previous one would have cooperated in eliminating those agencies so what was the point of your little snit fit? The reduction of regulations is an unambiguous good. Treat it as such.
What I am saying is that the battle will not be won with meaningless statistics like 13 regs abolished for every new reg. Government spending continues to EXPLODE under Trump. Our budget deficit is up another 27% since he was elected and Congress just passed another 2-year deal raising the debt limit without a fight.
I completely understand that Trump is fighting the fight by himself and I give him credit for recently putting everyone on notice to expect major spending cuts in his second term. He should have used this opportunity to highlight THAT instead of citing microscopic “savings” and dubious “ratios”.
Let’s not be so narrow-minded and sensitive. Keep in mind that the struggle between Trump and Powell over interest rates was one of global government debt crushing the world economy. We need to bring fiscal discipline back and Trump has to lead the way.
Remember, Trump was trying to protect the US economy by not making US treasuries too attractive while Powell was trying to re-establish Fed policy based on the US economy alone. Trump was being realistic while Powell, whose goals I agree with, was jumping the gun.
We are already one of the very last countries to have interest rates above zero which is why foreign money keeps pouring into treasuries, US stocks and real estate. Trump should have publicly argued that we shouldn’t make them so attractive that debt monopolizes all capital. And the reason that problem exists is that every time the economy gets stronger and tax revenue exceed expectations, Congress ramps up spending $2 for every $1 of additional revenue. THAT is the ratio he should be talking about. Go after Congress!
Do you down twinkle faeries see a problem with that?
Here’s exactly what I am talking about.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/25/house-gop-budget-vote-1433848
This was the perfect battle and the perfect time for Trump to fight for fiscal responsibility. He had House Republicans calling for a fight yet lobbied for passage.
Mnuchin is a Goldman Sachs big government globalist who is not on the right side with the China deal either. Are we supposed to be working our pompoms for this? Shouldn’t we be fighting this? Maybe Trump should be at least talking about it instead of lobbying against the House Freedom Caucus in getting it passed? How about forcing Congress to overcome a veto? Where are those vetoes by the way? And where is that “beautiful wall”? Not a single foot of new wall has been built. Are going to be blind on everything?
What 13 regulations will cancel this out?
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/454819-carbon-tax-shows-new-signs-of-life-in-congress
There are BIPARTISAN proposals! It doesn’t end because we keep playing games with statistics to tell a BS story. Trump needs to take a really good look at the advisors surrounding him. He is being steered away from major battles that the globalists are determined to win.
Make it 20.
IMO, all laws and regulations should be written to sunset automatically in 10 years of less unless proactively renewed.
With the requirement that they be read in full in the legislature with all impacted clauses, amendments, and what’s being replaced included in the reading.
You want an omnibus, be prepared to read it aloud for weeks.
Amen and every member of Congress and every President should have this framed and placed on the wall of their offices”
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government programm e,g., Social Security.
Thus, suspending their creation is the first step in stopping the plunder.”
And I’ll bet that unlike government spending there might actually be a multiplier effect for deregulation.
Boo-yah! No only will this result in direct savings to taxpayers, it’ll cut many of the cords holding the economy back, allowing it to pick up more speed.
It would be a massive legacy-enhancer if Trump were able to completely eliminate at least one federal agency.
It needs to be a little better than that…. I just got this letter from my favorite online science teacher https://thehappyscientist.com/ :
Business Changes
Changes in online sales tax laws are forcing me into a new business model. More and more states are now requiring online businesses to charge local sales tax. That probably does not sound like a big deal, but as I am finding out, it can be incredibly complex, time consuming, and expensive. Every state has their own laws about who has to charge sales tax, what types of transactions are covered, when and how you are required to pay and report sales tax, etc. Almost every city and county has its own sales tax rate, with over 12,000 different sales tax regions across the United States.
For large businesses, there are sales tax services that take care of all of that, for a fee. Unfortunately, that fee is large enough to put small businesses like mine out of business, so I either have to make a drastic change or go out of business.
At this point, the only option I can see is to stop charging for subscriptions (so no sales tax), make the website free for everyone, and include advertisements to pay for production, hosting, keeping my lights on, etc.”
Just to be clear, her problem is state and local and the mechanism that made those conditions possible is via lawsuits by various states.
Oh, I know. But wouldn’t this count as “interstate commerce”? I would think this does long before a farmer growing wheat for HIS hens counts.
I’ve been thinking about starting a subscription service online. Thank you for edifying me about this problem which may well be insurmountable.
Local governments SUCK.
It’s not possible this is true. You know who said Trump was a “collectivist” (even though he voted for actual collectivists).
Every regulation removed is good. We have an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy enforcing those regulations. Cut that too.