Throughout much of his successful campaign for the presidency, President-elect Donald Trump spoke repeatedly about his intentions to roll back, if not entirely undo, many of the business-killing
federal regulations put in place by President Barack Obama’s administration.
To that end, the American Action Forum dug into the regulatory nightmare emanating out of Washington, D.C., and compiled a list of dozens of regulations that could be immediately cut by Trump and the Republican-led Congress, according to
The Daily Caller.
Utilizing what is known as the Congressional Review Act to invalidate at least 48 major regulations, the
AAF report noted that, “Together, those rules impose more than $42.5 billion in total costs, $6.5 billion in annualized costs, and 53 million paperwork burden hours.”
“Republicans have the opportunity to enact regulatory reform on a scale not witnessed since President Reagan,” the report continued. “CRA disapproval resolutions seem poised to be a significant part of those plans.”
Analysts and report authors Sam Batkins and Dan Goldbeck provided a few examples of cuts that could immediately be made, such as to the Department of Interior’s restrictions on oil drilling in the Arctic region, or the
Environmental Protection Agency‘s ludicrous fuel efficiency standards for the trucking industry.
The Arctic drilling rule has been estimated to cost more than $2 billion, while the EPA’s industry-killing fuel regulation costs soared to an astonishing $29.3 billion.
“Although it is unlikely that Congress will cash in all its political capital to this end, several high-profile major rules – and their sizable burdens – could go by the wayside in 2017,” the report noted, tempering expectations for a broad sweep of all burdensome regulations right away.
Furthermore, there are other regulations that may not have even been written yet that could be quickly overturned, due to various agencies in the Obama administration rushing to push through new “midnight”
regulations at the last moment.
Alas, Obama’s regulators have been quite busy this year, already formulating more than 78,000 pages of new rules thus far in 2016, with an estimated cost of at least $148 billion. The administration sill has a month and a half still remaining to write more.
Nevertheless, we anxiously await Trump and his team to finally taking office and beginning the arduous process of taking a scythe to the field of chaff that has grown up in and around D.C.’s regulatory structure.
Please share this on Facebook and Twitter to let everyone know that Trump and Congress can get to work immediately cutting back some of Obama’s many new federal regulations.
