Is Trump's battle against bureaucracy a game-changer or just a short-lived stunt?
The question is how to fix the problem. We need our leaders in all three branches of government to achieve deregulation. But so far, only the executive branch has been working to deregulate, apart from both houses of Congress voting to overturn a few Biden-era rules.
One new executive order from President Trump introduces expiration dates, or sunsets, to certain regulations, which will prod our elected representatives to consider in the future whether specific regulations are needed and prevent unchecked accumulation of regulatory sludge. Without sunset dates, once a rule is on the books, it's permanent unless Congress or an agency acts to remove it. Congress isn't inclined to do so because it requires effort and consensus. Regulatory agencies rarely eliminate rules, because the process can take months or even years. That is how the Code of Federal Regulations has ballooned to more than 188,000 pages.
Another new Trump executive order directs agency heads to review their regulations for legality and constitutionality, in light of recent Supreme Court rulings curbing power wielded by the unelected administrative state. Agency self-review could deliver significant regulatory relief, especially when bolstered by another early Trump order imposing an ambitious 'one-in, ten-out' rulemaking process. Together such orders can slow the influx of new regulations while pruning the existing stock.
But regulatory reformers must heed a lesson from Trump's first term: executive orders aren't enough. Permanent reform demands congressional legislation.
Executive actions can be fleeting. Joe Biden reversed Trump's regulatory streamlining agenda in 2021, for example, and Trump returned the favor this January. While Trump's sunset order could help in the short term, it may not outlast his presidency. Lasting change requires legislation like Sen. Joni Ernst's (R-Iowa) SCRUB Act, which includes a sunset provision.
The SCRUB Act and other bills also have a tool more effective than agency self-policing: an outside commission that would comb the books for outdated or harmful rules and put them in a repeal package for Congress to permanently repeal. This commission approach worked for closing unneeded military bases in the 1990s after the Cold War ended. Taxpayers have saved billions of dollars. If it worked for defense spending, it can work for regulations.
Other Trump executive orders on regulation cover everything from cost-benefit analysis to anti-competitive regulations. The same principle applies. If reforms are to endure, Congress must do its part, and swiftly. If Trump's relentless trade war persists, a recession could erode the GOP's current majority, complicating reform efforts.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not a sufficient force for deregulation, as it lacks Congress's legislative authority and has in any event focused more on agency payrolls than regulatory actions. We need Congress to step up. Otherwise, as the Archbridge Institute's Justin Callais points out, if Trump can cut spending without Congress, 'what is to stop future Presidents from adding to government spending without congressional approval'?
Courts also need to be more engaged in regulation. If an executive branch agency issues an unconstitutional rule or one that Congress never authorized with a statute, the judiciary's proper role is to strike it down when presented with pertinent litigation. That is the court's role in maintaining the Constitution's separation of powers. Recent court decisions regarding the major questions and non-delegation doctrines make it easier for courts to do their job. Next comes the test.
Whatever Trump's flaws, his administration has a unique opportunity to tackle overregulation. But the president cannot succeed without the other branches of government. The time to act is now. Federal regulations cost over $2 trillion per year. More than 3,000 new regulations hit the books last year, and the most recent Unified Agenda listed more than 3,500 upcoming rules. The 188,000-page Code of Federal Regulations is still growing. These are trends in the wrong direction.
The president's push to curb overregulation is welcome, but he can't do it alone.
Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr. is the Fred L. Smith fellow in regulatory studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where Ryan Young is senior economist.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
22 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Trump says he's considering ‘taking away' Rosie O'Donnell's US citizenship
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he is considering 'taking away' the U.S. citizenship of a longtime rival, actress and comedian Rosie O'Donnell, despite a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits such an action by the government. 'Because of the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,' Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. He added that O'Donnell, who moved to Ireland in January, should stay in Ireland 'if they want her.' The two have criticized each other publicly for years, an often bitter back-and-forth that predates Trump's involvement in politics. In recent days, O'Donnell on social media denounced Trump and recent moves by his administration, including the signing of a massive GOP-backed tax breaks and spending cuts plan. It's just the latest threat by Trump to revoke the citizenship of people with whom he has publicly disagreed, most recently his former adviser and one-time ally, Elon Musk . But O'Donnell's situation is notably different from Musk, who was born in South Africa. O'Donnell was born in the United States and has a constitutional right to U.S. citizenship. The U.S. State Department notes on its website that U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization may relinquish U.S. nationality by taking certain steps – but only if the act is performed voluntary and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship. Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, noted the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the Fourteen Amendment of the Constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship. 'The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born U.S. citizen,' Frost said in an email Saturday. 'In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.' O'Donnell moved to Ireland after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to win his second term. She has said she's in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage. Responding to Trump Saturday, O'Donnell wrote on social media that she had upset the president and 'add me to the list of people who oppose him at every turn.'
CNBC
26 minutes ago
- CNBC
With an exodus of millionaires, businesses and workers, has London lost its spark?
London, the jewel in the crown of the U.K.'s economy and national culture, has taken a bit of a battering lately, with big business looking to expand elsewhere, workers looking for more affordable places to live and a flock of millionaires fleeing the city. A new tax regime targeting the "non-dom" status of the London-based super rich prompted an estimated 10,000 millionaires to flee the city in 2024 in search of safer havens for their cash. For the have-nots, high living costs — and a post-pandemic reevaluation of what makes for quality of life — have prompted many people of working age to leave the city, data shows, as it becomes prohibitively expensive to stay. London's pride as a business hub has also been dented in recent years as homegrown firms have looked elsewhere to base themselves or expand, increasingly looking to IPO abroad or moving their primary listing away from the U.K. So, is it all doom and gloom for the Big Smoke? Not necessarily. While the streets might not be paved with gold, London still has an irresistible pull for millions of people looking for work, study and play, with an estimated 20 million tourists visiting the city in 2023. CNBC asked several U.K.-based analysts for their thoughts on whether the city is on downward trajectory, or just experiencing some bumps in the road. Here's what they had to say. London's crown has been slipping "for years" when it comes to its business appeal and affordability for ordinary folk, Bill Blain, market strategist, former investment banker and author of the "Blain's Morning porridge" newsletter, told CNBC. He said doing business in the capital is "just not nice anymore," and the atmosphere in the affluent City of London and Canary Wharf, the capital's financial districts, is even worse. "There is not the buzz that we used to have in the City, in Canary Wharf," Blain said, lamenting "how quickly London is becoming relevant." "You name me a single significant U.K. investment bank? You name me a single significant U.K. private capital market firm? They're all big American firms," Blain said. "When it comes to the banks, you've got the Europeans, the French and the Germans, who are there just by the skin of their teeth. But there's nothing left for the U.K. You go into the City today and take a look around, and it's dire. There's lots of people there, but they're all insurance clerks, or whatever. They're not the investment bankers of a previous generation. My generation were the last who got it good," he said. Blain blamed over-regulation for the City's demise, believing that "the number of people who are involved in compliance and regulation and form filling vastly outnumbers the number who are on the front line of finance." Blain said he believes it lost its global reputation for having a relatively stable political establishment, with six prime ministers in the last 10 years, and that it was also tarnished in the wake of the tumultuous departure from the European Union five years ago. After a landslide election win last year, the current Labour government, and Finance Minister Rachel Reeves, find themselves under heightened pressure to stick to self-imposed rules on debt and borrowing, while trying to increase public spending and to promote much-needed growth. "In the past, you could look at the U.K. and say, yes, it's no longer the biggest economy in the world, but it's generally stable in [terms of] competence, so you invest in it. But these things are now beginning to be questioned, and that's the big risk for the U.K.," Blain said. Barret Kupelian, chief U.K. economist at PwC was keen to point out it's not all gloom and doom for the capital in the long term. "If I focus on the fundamentals that make London, London the first thing is the rule of law, and then you've got all the intangibles like history, culture, diversity, talent, innovation, regulation, time zone, probity, infrastructure, etc. These things haven't changed in a massive manner in the past few years," Kupelian told CNBC Wednesday. "We see London actually having a quiet, stable, soft infrastructure, and businesses are still here, large businesses that are in London, because of the quality of regulation," he said. Kupelian defended London's status as a hub for financial services but said it's also adapting and evolving. "One of the things that's happening quite in the background is that our goods exports are stagnating, partly because of the trading environment we're in right now, tariffs and what have you ... but services exports are growing quite strongly and a lot of it is being driven by business services," he said. "We always thought FS [financial services] was the crown jewel in London, and it is, but actually, in terms of growth rates, if you take a look at the export side of the ledger, a lot of it is being driven by business services," he noted. PwC, in conjunction with pollster Demos, produces an annual "Good Growth for Cities Index" which measures the economic well-being of British cities and looks beyond economic output, considering factors like jobs, income, health, skills and work-life balance. It found in 2024 that while London was expected to see strong economic growth in 2025, it compared much less favorably with other British cities in terms of livability factors. That includes the lack of affordable housing and creaking transport infrastructure — as anyone on a hot, dirty and cramped Central Line tube on their morning commute to work will attest. "This is the story relative to the rest of the country, but then what about relative to the rest of the world?" Kupelian remarked, noting that "there's always been intense competition between the large metropolises of the world," such as New York, Paris, Singapore, Beijing and Tokyo. "I think London is feeling that competition on a much more intense level now," Kupelian said, with the city needing to look at its counterparts, and itself, with a more critical eye to see what it could do better. Prescribing "targeted interventions" rather than a "complete reinvention," he said London is well placed to keep attracting a talented, skilled workforce, businesses and growth. "Businesses are still here, large businesses that are in London, because of the quality of regulation. I think that that's one of the main appeals of London. [Policymakers should] re-emphasize those points and just keep at it. I don't think there's one thing that would flick the switch leading to fortune and success, but I think there's these smaller things that probably need tweaking rather than complete reinvention — that London can do."
New York Post
41 minutes ago
- New York Post
Biden defends controversial autopen use for mass clemency decisions in NYT interview: ‘A whole lot of people'
Former President Joe Biden defended his use of an autopen during a recent interview, shedding light on his administration's rationale for the controversial use of the technology. The interview with the New York Times was centered around his use of an autopen during the last pardons that he made during the end of his administration. In his final weeks in office, Biden granted clemency and pardoned more than 1,500 individuals, in what the White House described at the time as the largest single-day act of clemency by a US president. Speaking to the Times on Thursday, Biden said that he 'made every decision' on his own. 'We're talking about [granting clemency to] a whole lot of people,' the Democrat said. However, the Times reported that Biden 'did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people,' according to the former president and his aides. 3 Biden signs an executive order related to government services in the Oval Office of the White House Dec. 13, 2021. Getty Images 'Rather, after extensive discussion of different possible criteria, [Biden] signed off on the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence,' the Times's report read. Instead of repeatedly asking the president to resign updated versions of official documents, his staff used an autopen to put Biden's signature on the final version. Biden's comments came as Republicans attacked him for his autopen use on a massive number of official documents. 3 Former President Joe Biden signs an executive order at the White House in Washington, DC, on Oct. 30, 2023. Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images In June, President Donald Trump sent a memo to the Department of Justice directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the autopen use and to determine whether it was related to a decline in Biden's mental state. 'In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden's aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden's cognitive decline and assert Article II authority,' Trump wrote. 'This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden's signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.' 3 Former President Joe Biden defended his use of an autopen during a recent interview, shedding light on his administration's rationale for the controversial use of the technology. Also in June, Trump told reporters that he thought it was 'inappropriate' to use an autopen at all, though past presidents have used them. 'Usually, when they put documents in front of you, they're important,' Trump said. 'Even if you're signing ambassadorships or – and I consider that important, I think it's inappropriate.' 'You have somebody that's devoting four years of their life or more to being an ambassador. I think you really deserve that person deserves to get a real signature… not an autopen signature.' Fox News Digital's Breanne Deppisch contributed to this report.
