Trump is taming the regulation beast

President Trump just signed an executive order that makes it harder to regulate.

In January, he ordered agencies to set a cap on the total economic costs of all new regulations. The cap was zero through the budget year, which ends on September 30.

For 2018, look for the cap to be less than zero.



From Politico:

Agencies are expected to “propose a net reduction in total incremental regulatory costs.” In other words, the economic cost of federal regulations must go down. The policy, which was implemented in an agency-wide memo, doesn’t apply to every regulation; many rules are exempt because their costs are minimal, they are required by law or they are related to national security, among other reasons. And OMB still can issue agencies a waiver if officials deem it necessary. But for most major regulations — the type of health and safety rules that get significant attention—the policy could impose new restrictions on agencies’ ability to issue new rules, experts said. An OMB official did not respond to a request for comment.

Given the Trump administration’s focus on deregulation, experts weren’t exactly surprised by the memo. They noted that it just “expects” agencies to cut regulatory costs — it doesn’t require it. But it still represents a dramatic shift in how agencies have traditionally regulated. For all Trump’s deregulatory successes in his first seven-plus months in office, his bigger war on the regulatory system may just be beginning.

This should prove to be a bigger boost to the economy than tax cuts or renegotiating trade treaties that have us over the barrel.

Business executives will be better able to manage their companies without having to navigate the often contradictory maze of government regulations.

Another Politico story -- "Under Trump, regulation slows to a crawl" -- lamented how President Trump has succeeded in shutting down the bureaucracy.

From Politico:

From Inauguration Day until the end of May, just 15 regulations were approved by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the White House department that reviews important new federal rules. That's by far the fewest among comparable periods since recordkeeping began in the 1990s: Ninety-three rules were approved during the same period in Barack Obama's administration, and 114 under George W. Bush.

The pace of minor rules has also slowed down, though not as dramatically: The Trump administration published 1,005 regulations in the Federal Register from Inauguration Day until the end of May, still fewer than the Obama and Bush administrations but not as extreme a drop. Most of those are small tweaks to requirements and procedures. Under the Trump administration, the government has adjusted the drawbridge schedule of the Atlantic Beach Bridge and designated an airspace near a ranch in Montana. But it hasn't done much else.

The slowdown is a good thing.

Danny Vinik, the reporter, seemed confused by Trump's action, writing:

But rulemaking is the key way a White House shapes policy, and for an administration that has struggled to populate federal agencies and get laws passed through Congress, the rulemaking gap denies the administration its biggest chance to make an impact on how America runs. The slowdown has begun to concern some business groups, who worry that key regulations simply aren’t being issued as expected — and liberals warn it could leave the government playing catch-up with major changes.

Ah, someone has been in Washington too long.

Trump is making the statement that a government that governs least, governs best.

The Internet boomed in the 1990s because it had few regulations. Somehow, without government control of each and every pixel, we managed to make it possible fro a man in Australia to buy a book from a writer in Poca, West Virginia.

But liberals hate it.

“It’s slowed to a crawl, and I’m sure for some folks, that’s a demonstration that the administration is putting their money where their mouth is,” said Amit Narang, a regulatory expert at Public Citizen, a watchdog group. “But for us, this is really alarming.”

A regulatory expert.

There's an occupation we do not need.

Then there was this:

The slowdown is causing problems for certain industries, which had been expecting rules and are struggling to plan in their absence. For instance, the Federal Aviation Administration was expected to release a rule early this year on the operation of commercial drones over people, but it has not yet done so. Lisa Ellman, co-executive director of the Commercial Drone Alliance, said she suspects that the “two-for-one” policy could be creating complications for the FAA. She argued that new drone rules should be considered deregulatory actions because they effectively reduce the red tape on drone operators; forcing the FAA to find two regulations to eliminate, she added, will only hurt the growth of the industry.

“The commercial drone industry wants to be regulated,” she said. “That’s why the industry is very hopeful that there’s an exception.”

Of course the industry wants regulation.

Regulations are a barrier to competition.

The drone industry is wide open, just like the Internet was.

They want it closed.

At any rate, the president promised to roll back regulations.

And it is happening.

***

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