Lankford: Headed In The Right Regulatory Direction
Headed in the right regulatory direction
By Sen. James Lankford
Since the recession of 2008 and 2009, the U.S. economy has continued to remain sluggish. This is the slowest recovery on record — the economy has only grown 2 percent a year since the 2009 low point. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the federal regulatory burden plays a major role.
Last year set a record for regulations, with 3,892 regulations and 97,110 pages in the Federal Register, by far an all-time record for a single year. In the last three weeks of 2016, dozens of regulations costing taxpayers $24 billion in regulatory costs were issued. Schools, hospitals and businesses are struggling to survive under the regulatory burden.
As we reach President Trump’s first 100 days in office, perhaps the biggest deliverable, other than a new Supreme Court justice, has been a drastic new direction on regulations. In just more than three months, the pace of escalating regulatory burden has stopped. The Trump administration and Congress have worked together to roll back regulations through executive orders and Congressional Review Acts, a rarely used legislative tool that allows Congress and the president to review a major regulation within 60 days of implementation and reverse it.