White House to release fall regulatory agenda

The Trump administration is expected to release its semiannual unified regulatory agenda overnight on Tuesday.

The document, which comes from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is a roadmap of sorts for what regulatory and deregulatory actions the federal agencies plan to make in the coming months.

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The previous agendas released under this administration have focused more on eliminating rules than issuing new ones.

A senior administration official told reporters in a call Tuesday evening that agencies eliminated $23 billon in regulatory costs over the last year and $33 billion in regulatory costs since President Trump took office.

Trump made deregulation a policy priority of his administration, ordering agencies to cut two rules for every new rule proposed.

Last year, the senior administration official said the federal agencies were able to eliminated a total of 176 regulations. Of the 176 tossed out, 57 were considered significant. The administration classifies significant rules as those that have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more.

The senior administration official also said agencies enacted 14 significant new rules in 2018. The official, however, could not provide totals from the soon-to-be released agenda for the number of new rules agencies expect to issue in the coming year or give a total for the number of rules they plan to cut.

Regulatory advocates have criticized the administration for eliminating rules that benefit society, like those that aim to combat climate change and achieve cleaner air and water.

At the beginning of the year, the White House released a draft report to Congress that was seemingly at odds with Trump’s claim that regulations are burdening the economy.

The report showed from 2006 to 2016, the annual benefits of regulations outweighed the annual costs.

The administration official told reporters Tuesday that those reports reflect agency estimates of cost and benefits of rules before they go into effect and the number often vary later on.

“For both deregulatory and regulatory actions benefits have to outweigh the costs,” the official said. “We’re not eliminating regulations that are working.”