Adding to his administration’s success in cutting Obama era regulations, President Trump also issued the lowest amount of federal red tape in a quarter century, and 35% less than former President Obama in his last year in office.
According to regulatory watchdog Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, red tape as measured by Federal Register pages dropped from a record 95,894 last year to 61,950. The last time it was so low was in former President Bill Clinton’s first year, 1993, and that was the record.
“This is the lowest count since 1993’s 61,166 pages. That was Bill Clinton’s first year, and his own lowest-ever count,” said Crews in a just-posted blog post.
“A year ago, Obama set the all-time Federal Register page record with 95,894 pages. Trump’s Federal Register is a 35 percent drop from Obama’s record, set last year,” he wrote, adding, “After the National Archives processes all the blank pages and skips in the 2017 Federal Register, Trump’s final count will ultimately be even lower.”
The Federal Register is where all new rules and regulations are presented and a page drop count is symbolic of Trump’s bid to end the era of rules.
It follows on a White House report that the president killed over 1,500 pending Obama regulations.
During the campaign, and in an Executive Order, Trump promised to kill two Obama-era regulations for every new one his team wanted. They cut so many in the first year that the ratio was 22 cut for every new rule.
Said Crews, “Trump has made significant strides in reducing the pace of regulation. Rule counts and Federal Register pages are imperfect but useful gauges, and one hopes impel policymakers toward better measurements. As it stands, since a rule has to be written to get rid of a rule, the Federal Register and rule counts can both grow even in a deregulatory environment, unless Congress short-cuts the process with healthy reform legislation.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com
