For Trump And Icahn, Experts Say Regulatory Reform Should Be More Than a Numbers Game

Reason.com discusses regulatory reform under the Trump administration with Wayne Crews and Kent Lassman. 

To get below the surface, Trump’s team could look to the Competitive Enterprise Institute—including regulatory policy guru Clyde Wayne Crews, who coined the apt descriptor “regulatory dark matter” for all those off-the-books regulations—which last week published a new report with five steps the next administration and Congress can take to reform the federal regulatory state.

The first thing the new administration should do is implement a better review process within the White House Office of Management and Budget. In theory, the OMB is supposed to make sure that proposed regulations’ benefits outweigh the potential costs, but in reality this process is fraught with problems. Of the approximately 3,500 rules issued by dozens of federal agencies each year, only a few handfuls are subject to cost-benefit analysis.

Beyond that, Congress probably has to get involved.

The CEI report calls for Congress to assert itself by threatening to defund agencies that overstep their statutory authority and to use the Congressional Review Act to bring more accountability to executive branch agencies and commissions. The CRA was passed in 1996 and gives Congress the option of pausing any new regulation for up to 60 days of public scrutiny.

The law has been used sparingly and has only once, in 2001, resulted in the repeal of a federal regulation.

Congress also should reverse a decades-long trend of abdicating responsibilities to the executive branch agencies and over-delegating decision-making processes.

“Congress is poised to make great strides in returning a balance of power to the federal government through reining in the regulatory state,” said Kent Lassman, president of CEI, in a statement.

Read the full article at Reason.com