President Donald Trump promised to de-regulate and the White House has already rolled back 860 Obama-era regulations.
“In a report, the Trump administration said it had withdrawn 469 planned regulatory actions that had been part of the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda published last fall. Officials also reconsidered 391 active regulatory proceedings actions by reclassifying them as long-term or inactive “allowing for further careful review,” the White House said,” writes Reuters.
“The Trump administration has identified nearly 300 regulations related to energy production and environmental protection it plans to rescind, review or delay across three agencies – the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior and Energy Departments.”
Although the Trump administration has been criticized for signing the most executive orders in the last six months, many of which related to regulations, it has eliminated 16 old rules for every new one. Billions have been saved in regulatory costs since January.
“It’s really the beginning of a kind of fundamental regulatory reform and a reorientation of where we’re going with regulation,” said Neomi Rao, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget.
The former President Barack Obama had an opposite approach, and instead introduced detrimental regulations for multiple industries, especially for the oil and gas industry, halting economic growth.
“We just got through eight years of a regulatory onslaught, aimed at curtailing oil and gas production. So we are very supportive of the administration’s efforts to roll back regulation,” said Kathleen Sgamma, head of the Western Energy Alliance, representing oil and gas drillers in Western states.
The former methane rule cost the industry roughly $50,000 per well.
Apparently, there was a “secret list” of 179 proposed regulations from the Obama administration, many of which would enforce regulatory policies that would hurt businesses even more.
“They had a bunch of things that they wanted to regulate,” said Mulvaney. “They just didn’t want to tell you about it. They thought it would be bad for their re-election prospects in 2012, so they created a secret list of regs that were not disclosed to you folks. We are disclosing it.”
But, the Obama-era is over. Mulvaney said there will be no more secret lists.
“There will be no more of that,” said Mulvaney. “We will not have a hidden list of regulations that we’re thinking about doing but we’re not going to tell you about. That’s going to end effective immediately. In fact, it already has ended.”
16 of the regulations eliminated by Trump previously cost businesses over $100 million a year.
“Amazing things are happening there, and I think we’re going to be announcing some of them over the next two months,” said Trump. “We’re going to be streamlining, as we have in other industries, regulations so that advancements can reach patients quickly.”
The White House also said that the new regulatory agenda “represents the beginning of fundamental regulatory reform and a reorientation toward reducing unnecessary regulatory burden on the American people.”
This is all part of the MAGAnomics (Make America Great Again) strategy Mulvaney introduced last week. The administration has a goal to reach 3% economic growth and has an aggressive agenda to do so.
“Our fear is that if we don’t get back there quickly, there will be people who never know what 3 percent means,” said Mulvaney. “And I don’t think it should come as a surprise that there are some people who don’t want you to remember what 3 percent growth would be like because it would be a tremendous sort of damnation of what happened in the previous administration.”