The Patriot Post® · Trump's Great Regulatory Rollback

One reason leftists hate President Donald Trump so much: He keeps his campaign promises. They’ve never heard of such an animal, and it drives them crazy. In a White House ceremony staged beside massive amounts of paper and red tape, Trump announced Thursday, “Within the first 11 months, we canceled or delayed over 1,500 planned regulatory actions, more than any previous president, by far. And you see the results, when you look at the stock market … and when you see companies coming back into our country. Instead of eliminating two old regulations for every one new regulation, we have eliminated 22. Twenty-two. That’s a big difference. We aimed for two for one, and in 2017, we hit 22-1.”

As The Washington Free Beacon notes, “The roll back in regulations is a stunning contrast to the Obama administration, which imposed a record 600 major regulations, adding rules that cost the economy $100 million or more at a rate of every three days.” By contrast, “The Trump administration has withdrawn or delayed 1,579 planned regulatory actions. This includes 635 regulations that were withdrawn, 244 regulations that were made inactive, and 700 regulations that were delayed.”

Trump promises even more of the great regulatory rollback in 2018. “We’re going to cut a ribbon because we’re getting back below the 1960 level,” he promised, holding a pair of gold scissors. “And we’ll be back there fairly quickly.” The heavy lift for him is going to be repealing major regulations — statutes with an impact of $100 million or more. If he can do that, it will be “yuge” indeed.

The grounding for his actions is even more important. “This excessive regulation does not just threaten our economy, it threatens our entire Constitution,” he said. “Regulation is still taxation,” he added — a point we’ve made a thousand times. Furthermore, he concluded, “Congress has abandoned much of its responsibility to legislate, and has instead given unelected regulators extraordinary power to control the lives of others.” That’s exactly right.