On Oct. 16, the Trump administration released its fall Unified Agenda, which outlines regulatory agency priorities for the year and provides a list of actions that federal agencies are working on. Historically, the business community pays close attention, but most journalists and the general public do not. That’s all starting to change now, because alongside the Unified Agenda, the Trump administration is releasing critical information related to its experiment in regulatory budgeting.

What is a “regulatory budget?” We all know that regulatory agencies have fiscal budgets — a certain amount of money provided by Congress each year. And nearly all would agree that a cap on agency spending makes sense, because it would be crazy to give regulators license to spend unlimited amounts of taxpayers’ money.