Trump budget chief touts progress in rolling back regulations

White House Budget chief Mick Mulvaney will release on Thursday a report claiming progress on regulatory rollback, a major priority of the Trump administration.

“In the first five months of this administration alone the net cost of our regulatory agenda has been less than zero dollars,” Mulvaney said in a prepared statement, in which he trumpeted the economic agenda he has dubbed “MAGAnomics.” MAGA is an acronym for President Trump’s campaign slogan Make America Great Again.

Mulvaney’s report will tout the administration’s withdrawal or deactivation of 860 regulatory actions, and that the administration has issued only half as many economically significant regulations when compared to the same period last year.

It also notes that the Congressional Review Act allowed Congress to undo a series of Obama-era regulations, and says the administration has achieved an annualized cost savings of $22 million from agencies.

“This Agenda represents the beginning of fundamental regulatory reform and a reorientation toward reducing the overall regulatory burden on the American people,” said Neomi Rao, the budget office’s administrator for regulatory affairs.

Critics have charged that some of the regulatory rollbacks have come at a cost to the environment, consumer protections, and health.

For example, the Bureau of Land Management is proposing a repeal of a regulation for hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, which the administration says is duplicative, and the Environmental Protection Agency is giving up regulations on oil and gas development in the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservations in Utah.