President Trump on Wednesday ordered federal agency heads to scrap three regulations on the books for every new one they implement, targeting “illegal or unconstitutional” rules for elimination.
“These are regulations that are currently in effect that we believe blatantly violate the law, blatantly violate Supreme Court precedent or otherwise just blatantly illegal,” said White House staff secretary Will Scharf as Mr. Trump signed the three-for-one executive order.
Mr. Trump called it “a big deal.”
“It’s really very important that we get these memorialized by Congress,” he said. “For the long haul.”
The order is aimed at reducing the administrative state that Mr. Trump has long complained chokes economic growth and makes life difficult for Americans.
It is a more ambitious version of his first-term mantra of “one-in, two-out” deregulatory goal, telling department heads they had to eliminate two regulations for each new one they adopted. Now the number of rules that must go out the window has been expanded by one.
Mr. Trump claimed his first-term policy led to net cost savings and regulatory reductions across several agencies despite deep resistance and inherent issues in the rulemaking process that make it difficult to scuttle rules.
It’s unclear if Mr. Trump’s more expansive vision can succeed where even the more modest effort faces obstacles.
In 2017, the White House claimed that it reduced an average of 22 rules for every rule it had adopted. By 2020, that ratio had dropped to a more modest 3.2-to-1.
