What Trump is doing to regulations

Politico - What Trump has actually done is, rather than repealing old rules, he has put a cork in the federal regulatory process, slow-playing rulemaking and in many cases stopping it entirely. According to a Politico analysis, the White House’s regulatory office has approved just 156 regulations since Inauguration Day, a huge drop compared with the Obama and Bush administrations: The office approved 510 rules in Barack Obama’s first year. For George W. Bush, it was 445.

Conservatives have celebrated this regulatory slowdown as welcome relief from an overbearing Washington, while liberals worry the government is neglecting its duties as a watchdog. But the numbers in many ways mask the unprecedented nature of what Trump is doing. Over the past year, the White House has laid the groundwork for a radical regulatory experiment across the government, limiting the ability of agencies to issue new rules and installing task forces at each agency to root out outdated ones. Conservatives have long said such a review would turn up numerous rules with huge costs and few benefits; Trump has begun testing that theory, and supporters are confident in the results.