Trump's 2018 Deregulatory Effort: 3,367 Rules, 68,082 Pages

The Competitive Enterprise Institute ^ | December 31, 2018 | Clyde Wayne Crews

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

At year-end 2018, how is President Donald Trump’s regulatory reform project going?

Better than Obama, Bush II, and Clinton in terms of fewer regulations; but not as good as Trump’s own first year.

Let’s look at it. Monday, December 31, 2018, is the last federal workday of the year. That would seem obvious, but a partial federal shutdown on December 22 made clock-out earlier for some.

Nonetheless, a preliminary tally for Federal Register page and rule counts for Trump’s 2nd calendar year has appeared, even though “[d]uring the funding lapse, Federalregister.gov is not being supported."

The Number of Pages in the Federal Register

First, some perspective from a year ago; 2017 concluded with 61,308 pages under Trump; that was the lowest count in a quarter-century (since 61,166 pages under Bill Clinton in 1993). Former President Obama set the all-time record Federal Register with 95,894 pages in 2016.

This time, 2018 Federal Register has topped out at 68,082 pages. (Here’s the December 31, 2018 cover.) That’s a 10 percent increase for Trump over his first year.

It’s not as bad as it seems, though. While the Framers were unable to secure the blessings of liberty for posterity, the architects of the 20th century Administrative State have been able to secure a system of permanence for their successors. Rules and regulations cannot be revoked, only replaced by new ones under the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act’s public notice-and-comment process. (And things get even far more convoluted than that.)

[Sir Napsalot]

Follow that up (rules deregulation) by cutting large number of federal government work force enforcing rules and regulations.

[SunkenCiv]

By contrast...

Thanks Iron Munro:

[mosesdapoet]

Attempted to decipher this meandering piece from CEI by C.W Crews. The best I can get out of this is that the POTUS has to rewrite any regulation put in by a previous President in order to revoke it.Because of the 1947 Administrative Procedures Act. Which sounds like, it prevents any simple revocation.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Agreed.