How Trump’s new executive orders protect the public against the administrative state. dailysign.al/2ITOMuf @DailySignal
@DailySignal These new orders go beyond deregulation and cutting red tape. They help to secure individual liberty through the advancement of timeless, nonpartisan principles, such as fair notice, due process, transparency, accountability, and rigorous, analytical decision-making.
@DailySignal One of those orders requires each agency to create a user-friendly database of all guidance documents that the agency has issued and intends to keep. All others must be rescinded.
@DailySignal The second order prohibits agencies from bringing enforcement actions against private parties for violating standards announced solely in guidance documents, not in acts of Congress or regulations issued through the Administrative Procedure Act notice-and-comment process.
@DailySignal Together, the two orders allow agencies to use guidance documents for their original purpose; namely, explaining what the agency does or thinks a law or regulation means—without putting the public at risk of being accused of violating a secret agency “law.”
@DailySignal The Trump administration has successfully protected the public against regulatory overreach. According to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the administration imposed, on net, zero new regulatory costs during its first two years.
@DailySignal Trump and Congress also nullified more than a dozen agency rules via the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to “fast track” the repeal of rules. At last count, the administration removed or delayed some 1,500 unnecessary new regulations that were in the pipeline.
@DailySignal These actions aren’t about deregulation or cutting red tape, but are about reforming the regulatory process itself to make it fairer and more accountable to the people. These good government reforms are necessary, important, and worthy of celebration.
@DailySignal The rule, which builds off a less-binding memo issued in 2005, requires the federal government to cover the cost of agency decisions that would increase spending. The process is called administrative “pay-as-you-go,” or PAYGO.
@DailySignal Congress is supposed to make spending decisions through legislation, and the executive branch merely puts those laws into action. How then would federal agencies have the ability to raise or cut federal spending?
@DailySignal First, Congress has placed larger and larger amounts of federal spending into the “mandatory” category. Such programs do not require annual spending authorizations, and are able to avoid many budgetary restraints even on the rare occasions when Congress bothers to pass a budget.
@DailySignal Autopilot programs, which include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, are the driving force behind the rapid growth of federal spending.
@DailySignal Second, Congress has delegated more and more decision-making power to agencies. Laws that create mandatory programs often contain language allowing federal agencies to spend “such sums as may be necessary” to carry out a directive, giving bureaucrats a blank check.
@DailySignal If a law provides an agency with significant leeway in terms of designing and changing programs, the agency can re-design the program later to make it more expensive with few or no consequences. The new PAYGO rule would create consequences where none currently exist.
@DailySignal Ironicall, an example of an agency initiative increasing spending took place under the Trump administration. Depart of Agriculture through its so-called trade aid for farmers has spent and promised to spend tens of billions of dollars without explicit authorization from Congress.
@DailySignal This is possible due to broad powers granted to the USDA through the New Deal-era Commodity Credit Corporation, which includes a $30 billion annual spending limit.
@DailySignal Even setting aside the many flaws with the USDA program, the fact that Congress has created a law that doesn’t require legislators to have meaningful input in the design and implementation of a federal activity that spends billions of dollars a year is a constitutional travesty.
@DailySignal It takes a year’s hard work from tens of thousands of Americans to produce $1 billion in the economy. Any program spending such enormous amounts should receive serious scrutiny.
@DailySignal The “trade aid” itself only came about because of yet another area of congressional dereliction: trade and tariffs.
@DailySignal Laws have repeatedly delegated trade-related authority to the executive branch. In the case of the ongoing trade dispute with China, this has resulted in U.S. farmers losing billions of dollars in sales without direct approval from Congress.
@DailySignal Had the new administrative PAYGO rule been in place two years ago, it is possible that the USDA’s “trade aid” would have been much less expensive for taxpayers.
@DailySignal Although Section 7 of the PAYGO rule authorizes waivers based on standards such as “effective program delivery” and “the public interest,” the administration’s intent is clear.
@DailySignal If agencies follow the rule as closely as possible, and if future administrations keep the rule in place, it could stop wasteful initiatives from getting off the ground.
@DailySignal Yet the fact that the rule is even necessary is genuinely shameful. Congress, which has made a mockery of its own version of PAYGO, should reclaim decision-making powers ceded to executive branch agencies and use those powers responsibly.
@DailySignal The new executive order is a step in the right direction. However, it is no substitute for vitally needed laws to create comprehensive budgeting covering all categories of spending, robust fiscal rules, and a more manageable federal government.
