What Can Trump Do About Regulations?

Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has written a piece at Forbes on what will happen, now that Donald Trump has started the process of reducing our regulatory burden, such as by a "Freeze Memo." (The link to this within the article does not work.) The article is worth reading to gain an appreciation for the difficulty even the President's modest goals present, as well as the enormity of the problem regulations pose.

An example of both problems at once comes to us at the conclusion of the article:

Some big rules are beyond the reach of Congress's [review time] window for a resolution of disapproval, but important to members and to Trump. In regard to these latter two highlights -- non-enforcement or de-funding -- examples of targets might include:

• EPA's Clean Power Plan;
• EPA's Waters of the United States rule;
• DOT/FAA vaping ban on planes ("Use of Electronic Cigarettes on Aircraft");
• DoL overtime rule (in legal challenge);
• FDA's declaration of authority over eCigarettes;
• FDA's serving size regulations for food items, even breath mints; "Serving Sizes of Foods That Can Reasonably Be Consumed At One Eating Occasion";
• The Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rule.

It's not known whether or how such rules will be targeted, and this is just a sample. Best is for Congress to legislate to overturn, but Senate votes for such will fall short. [bold added]

So, add to the fact that Trump isn't arguing against regulations as such to the fact that he doesn't have political support to overturn some of these, and you can see that we are a long way from putting much of a dent in the regulatory state. That said, Trump deserves credit for making more people aware of the size and intrusiveness of the regulatory state. Such awareness affords more opportunities to raise the real issue: Its legitimacy.

-- CAV