These two opening paragraphs to Timothy Noah and Cogan Schneier’s Politico article were written with no irony intended, even though they are chock-full:
Prepare for an imperial presidency.
Donald Trump has pledged to “reform the entire regulatory code,” to “cancel immediately all illegal and overreaching executive orders,” and to place a “temporary moratorium on new agency regulations that are not compelled by Congress or public safety.”
Reforming the regulatory code, getting rid of illegal and overreaching executive orders, not adding new regulations — those would be actions by a chief executive shedding power.
If Trump does not do those things, he would be continuing in the imperial presidency established by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Rereading that second paragraph, who could possibly fear that? Certainly not anyone familiar with out-of-control executive agencies’ overproduction of regulatory red tape. circumventing Constitutional checks and balances, strangling the economy, and choking off freedom.
Look at the massive, massive costs of just one regulatory package, the Obama EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Look at what those costs forced on people would produce. An imperceptible result (truly something you could not perceive) whose value is entirely rhetorical:
- $366 Billion in regulatory costs to produce
- consumers paying $41 Billion to $73 Billion+ per year more in higher electricity costs
- temperatures by 2100 that would be 0.018 degrees Celsius lower than they would be otherwise
Imagine if you could save the economy $366 Billion at the price of temperatures not even two-hundredths of one degree by the next century. Wouldn’t you want a president to choose that?
