Elizabeth Harrington of the Washington Free Beacon details a new report about the potential positive impact of the Trump administration’s approach to regulation.
President Donald Trump’s executive order to eliminate two regulations for every new rule could result in zero net regulatory costs this fiscal year, a stunning shift in regulatory policy from the previous Obama administration.
The American Action Forum released a report Tuesday showing how Executive Order 13771 could significantly roll back regulatory burdens, using 2006 as a model.
The “Getting to $0” report written by Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, finds that through the executive orders on regulation and the Congressional Review Act, the administration could reduce net regulatory costs to zero by Oct. 1.
By contrast, the last year of the Obama presidency yielded $164 billion in costs from final regulations alone.
“With the landmark signature of Executive Order (EO) 13,771, the Trump administration has made a bold move to limit regulatory costs,” Batkins writes. “But is the EO’s goal of achieving $0 in regulatory costs for the remainder of the fiscal year (through October 1) possible?”
“According to American Action Forum (AAF) research, the administration need only be as restrained as the Bush Administration was in 2006 to accomplish the goal of no net costs,” the report states. “With the regulatory freeze still mostly in effect, the days of $164 billion in regulatory costs could come quickly to an end.”
The report notes there “have been virtually no new regulatory burdens” since the executive order was signed on Jan. 30. Trump signed another executive order on Friday that lays out how to enforce regulatory reform. The order creates a task force that will evaluate existing regulations to find ways to repeal, replace, or modify regulations that inhibit job creation, are ineffective, and impose more costs than benefits.
