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Posted on 04/25/2025 5:46:01 AM PDT by MtnClimber
“I’ve never seen anything like this.” — Donald Kenkel, Cornell University.
Last week, the New York Times discovered that President Donald Trump was serious when he promised to liberate the economy from the oppressive weight of the regulatory state, describing it as “deregulation on a mass scale.”
Cornell’s Donald Kenkel, who was chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in the first Trump administration, told the Times that “It’s going on much more quietly than some of the other fireworks we’re seeing, but it will have great impact.”
Great, indeed. In both senses of the word.
Gutting the regulatory state would free up massive amounts of pent-up economic energy, raise standards of living, lower inflation, and sharply cut the deficit, without unduly harming anyone (except busybody bureaucrats).
It’s hard to fathom just how gargantuan and intrusive the regulatory state has become over the past 100 years. Even the Times seems surprised, noting that “more than 400 federal agencies … regulate almost every aspect of American life.”
But that barely scratches the surface. Thursday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released its annual “10,000 Commandments” report, which tracks the regulatory Leviathan. CEI calculates that the annual cost of complying with federal regulations is now $2.155 trillion.
Let’s put that in some context.
- That’s nearly four times what corporations pay in federal income taxes.
- It’s the equivalent of a $16,061 hidden tax on every U.S. household, notes CEI. That’s more than the average household pays for food, or health care, or transportation, or clothes.
- The Federal Register, where all federal rules and regulations are printed, now takes more than 106,000 pages to hold the 98 million words issued by unelected bureaucrats.
- If U.S. regulations were a country, it would be the world’s 8th-largest in the world — bigger than Canada.
Trump tried to weed out some of the regulatory underbrush in his first term, but he got a late start, and Joe Biden reversed course on many of the gains Trump managed. This time, Trump is better prepared, better armed, and far more aggressive.
Normally, eliminating a regulation is a cumbersome process that requires a federal agency to write an entirely new rule justifying why it’s getting rid of the old one. The process can take years and guarantees legal challenges.
Trump doesn’t want to wait that long. He directed federal agencies to produce a list by this week of regulations they want to eliminate, and plans to employ “a set of novel legal strategies … to simply repeal or just stop enforcing regulations,” as the Times puts it.
“They believe that the rapid repeal of some rules — and the stop-work order on enforcing others — will quickly and permanently uproot a vast network of regulations that many see as a safety net, but that they view as a drag on industry,” the Times reports. “Experts say there has never been such an immediate and comprehensive strategy to so quickly erase or freeze this many rules that are woven throughout so many dimensions of the American economy and daily life.”
If Trump succeeds, the economic impact will be immediate and profound. Research by the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that just freezing existing rules in place would boost economic growth, lower inflation, and cut the deficit over the next 10 years by more than $1 trillion.
“The potential economic and fiscal benefits (of rolling back regulations) are substantial,” the report notes.
But if Trump succeeds in pulling regulations out by their roots, it will be up to Congress to poison the soil so a future president can’t just replant them.
The 10,000 Commandments report includes a host of reforms that lawmakers need to pass to permanently dismantle the regulatory state.
These include:
- Terminate departments, agencies, commissions, and programs that no longer serve a legitimate purpose so they can no longer issue regulations.
- Require congressional approval for major rules.
- Increase regulatory transparency to the public, such as with a regulatory “report card.”
- Put sunset dates on all new regulations.
Democrats and the mainstream press will scream bloody murder. Ignore them. The regulatory state must be killed if a thriving economy is ever to live.
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The parasite has grown larger than the host.
100 different judges will rule against it.
With the tyrannical, fascist judiciary department in this country, Americans are screwed. PRESIDENT Trump is unable to fix any of the fraud, waste and abuse the DemonRATS have added to our government.
BTTT
When Trump pull airbags out of cars, then I’ll know he’s SERIOUS about dropping the costs of regulations on society.
Too-weak corporations isn’t exactly an issue in the US right now. Sure, a lot of regulations are excessive, but more important to me is just getting the federal government’s nose out of so many functions altogether.
Here comes a Federal District Judge to order all the oppressive regulation back in place.
He might if he had even one scintilla of support from his fellow “Republicans” in Congress and the courts.
Nah can’t be that these reason US manufacturing loses to China. It’s all the unfair advantages. You know slave wages and subsidized companies that’s the reason. Couldn’t have anything to do with our own idiotic policies laws and bureaucrats.
I’ll say it again. Unleash US business, bring sanity to lawsuits, lower taxes, quit trying to kill energy and there is no need for tariffs. Bust the government unions. The crisis would be for all the US exports.
I agree. As the District Judge Judy Junior wannabes BLOCKS AND OBSTRUCTS every move the elected President of the United States, PRESIDENT TRUMP, makes as they are directed to do by their DemonRAT massas.
This means houses and cars you can afford to buy.
Lets get rid of anti lock disk brakes too while were at it.
Sorry, I WANT all those things in the automobiles I drive. If I didn't I would drive a Willy's Jeep.
Which are fun to drive. Have an engine/drive train similar to a International Harvester tractor and roll over just as easily because of their narrow wheelbase.
Most of the modern safety features came about because they actually saved lives. My sister in law survived a head on crash in her piece of crap Hyundai twenty years ago because it had an airbag. She walked away with some bruises.
On the other hand I hit the windshield and received facial lacerations. Spent over a week in a hospital. Had two reconstructive plastic surgeries. Passed on a third. All because the 60’s Chevy is was riding in when I was 14 did not have seat belts, airbags or other modern safety equipment. My friend the driver end up with a concussion. Headaches for over a year. Our other friend in the back seat ended up with a back injury that screwed him up for life.
What is interesting is that judges have intervened with more than 200 specific orders—while the administration has taken thousands of specific actions.
Judicial orders make lots of headlines—but in the real world the administration is making amazing positive changes in almost everything the government does.
My analogy—the judges are kicking up dust as the tanks roll through.
The dust looks very impressive.
Lol.
I have to admit, the EO that Trump signed the other day streamlining and reducing the process for submitting and obtaining permits for drilling or mining really made me sit up and take notice.
The new process is said (I think by Doug Bergum) to decrease the time to obtain a permit from years to less than 30 days! If so...AMAZING.
I have a suspicion that Chris Wright had something to do with this.
I have heard the guy knows the energy sector and its associated problems from top to bottom, and I’ll wager that when Trump asked him how he could leverage our natural resources to increase energy production and raw materials for industry, probably at the top of the list was: “Reform the Permit process” with everything else a distant second.
Agreed—and the slashing of federal employees in agencies like the Department of Interior and EPA simplifies the process.
The remaining employees will be required to meet tight deadlines or be fired—and there will be a lot less layers of management and in house lawyers to muddy the waters.
Local lawsuits are still going to be an issue—and business and industry friendly state legislatures will have to step up and do their part to defund and restrict the army of leftist litigators.
An air bag likely saved my life when I had an accident. At the least it saved my face from the windshield.
That being said I’m all for getting rid of the unnecessary regulations of which there are tens of thousands.
Congress is the key. Trump can issue EO's 24/7/365 in an effort to tame the bureaucracy and deep state. Yet they have only have a limited life span given elections. If Congress does not codify Trump's actions, the EO's are for naught.
“Should they take the seat belts out too?
Maybe let infants ride in the front without a car seat.
Lets get rid of anti lock disk brakes too while were at it.”
Ok Karen, saving lives COSTS MONEY, which is why commercial airplanes have never been made with giant parachutes, even though patents exist for that. Put in that big parachute, no one flies. Make cars expensive enough, we all get to live in 15 Minute Cities.
As to seat belts, I didn’t mention them FOR A REASON, and that being their cost per life saved is likely 1% of what airbags cost per life saved. Nader was right on seat belts, Jimmy Carter was WRONG on air bags and many people needlessly died (including infants) or needlessly got their faces re-arranged due to airbags, on top of everything else.
DOZENS of kids each year die from heat stroke due to being left in the back seat, so that can be debated. I have yet to find a study that shows any advantage of having kids in the back seats of cars, just ‘claims’ of such. Car seats do make sense to me and likely are low-cost per life saved, but I don’t necessarily agree with 5 foot tall kids having to sit in boosters.
Likewise anti-lock has caused many accidents and like still does, as people often don’t understand how they work, but I’m mixed on that one. Need to see some studies on it.
Most of the other safety improvements are passive and should continue, as they don’t significantly driving up the cost of cars and force people to drive older, high mileage, beat up cars longer than necessary.
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