While most of the media are caught up in travel orders and confirmation hearings, President Trump has set into motion the most significant transformation in years in the way Washington does business.
If the dominos fall accordingly, Trump and the 115th Congress will do more to rein in the massive federal administrative state and right-size the power of the executive branch than any administration in modern history.
Trump’s first move was a regulatory “freeze” on new rules. Then came the blockbuster “one-in, two-out” executive order. That is, for each new rule proposed by a federal agency, two existing rules must be scrubbed from the Federal Register.
Critics at the Progressive Policy Institute panned the order, saying the execution would be too complicated and take too long to make a real difference.
Nor is there a shortage of social media snark. “New regulation demanding that all reporters will address Trump as Your Excellency is balanced out by eliminating federal standards for water and air pollution. Meets the criteria, right?” asked a Facebook friend.
Let’s stop right there. For one, the order actually puts the burden on agency heads to identify which rules to repeal and prove that doing so would add zero incremental costs for 2017. After that, agencies must regularly report total costs and savings of each new or repealed regulation. This is currently done, but on a sketchy basis. For instance, the FDA says its rule on e-cigarettes will cost up to $77 million per year, but it admits it cannot quantify the benefits.
In addition, it works. A Mercatus Center study found Canada’s one-in, one-out policy got rid of 37 percent of its regulatory requirements in just three years. The United Kingdom’s one-in, three-out system has saved businesses the U.S. equivalent of more than $10 billion in regulatory costs per year since 2005.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., has championed the in-out approach, writing in 2010, “This will not only provide balance but also will help simplify or eliminate outdated rules and procedures.”
No one even has a reliable count of how many federal agencies there are. Not even the federal government. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Unified Agenda counts 60 agencies, while the Federal Register Index lists 257, and 316 are found in the U.S. Government Manual.
The rules dreamed up by this vague number of agencies amounted to 3,853 regulations and 97,110 pages added to the Federal Register in 2016, according to CEI. That’s the most ever in one year.
It hasn’t helped that Congress has largely enabled regulatory agencies to run amok, leaving state and local governments, business groups, and individuals to fend for themselves. The luckiest victims can fight in court. The rest have spent 583 million hours over the past eight years complying with agency rules at a cost of $1.89 trillion every year, about $15,000 per household.
Fortunately, Congress is taking cues from Trump.
The House has already passed the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS Act) requiring congressional approval for new regulations costing $100 million or more, and the Regulatory Accountability Act, which would require agencies to choose the least-costly regulatory option.
Congress has also finally decided to make better use of the Congressional Review Act of 1996 to review and overturn agency rules. This week alone could see the beginning of the end of five energy-related regulations, including the Stream Protection Rule and a Social Security Administration rule on gun ownership.
But Congress can’t stop there. A Regulatory Reduction Commission needs to come next. Similar to the Military Base Realignment and Closure commission (BRAC), a bipartisan panel would review regulations that are duplicative, unnecessary or excessive in a simple, transparent manner. Even the progressives at the PPI supports this idea.
Federal agencies were never intended to be a fourth governing estate. If they were, we’d have read about it in the Constitution. The Founders instead trusted that the three branches of government would fairly and equitably ensure any federally-created entities keep Americans safe and healthy, not act as agents for favored interests.
To be sure, there is always a risk the pendulum could swing too far in the other direction. But given the amount of level-headed scrutiny from the national media, that shouldn’t be a problem. Right?
Kathy Hoekstra (@khoekstra) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a regulatory policy reporter with Watchdog.org.
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