The State of the Administrative State: the Regulatory Impact of the Trump Administration
| Publication year | 2019 |
The State of the Administrative State: The Regulatory Impact of the Trump Administration
Kathy Wagner Hill
Abraham Lincoln once stated "The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite." Surely, Lincoln was not referring to the regulatory history of the country with his observation, but it is apt when "the state of the administrative state" is being assessed. To understand the Trump Administration's overall stance toward the administrative state and its particular regulatory actions, both the recent past and the likely impacts on the immediate future need to be considered. Beyond the daily attention-grabbing headlines and bold anti-regulatory rhetoric of President Donald Trump, his administration is building momentum implementing a significant amount of actual regulatory change which will have lasting impacts. The impacts are not only in the particular policy areas of focus, such as health, environmental, banking, immigration, but also on the administrative state itself in terms of its capacity.
The Administrative State: Past, Present and Future
The term "administrative state" was coined by Dwight Waldo in 1948 and he was steeply immersed in the already ongoing debate over the tension between democracy and bureaucracy that continues today.1 Waldo maintained that public servants basically have a duty to protect democratic principles as they implement the laws of the land. He also held that due process and public access to the government are important obligations to balance against the efficiency goals of the scientific management approach to administration. Finally, he argued that government is not a business and can't be run like one because its task is infinitely more challenging given the obligation to uphold the Constitution and democratic values. His views are in sharp contrast to those of Herbert A. Simon who wrote a book in 1947 entitled, Administrative Behavior.2 His maximum efficiency approach insists bureaucrats have to separate values from facts. Simon won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1978, but he didn't necessarily win the debate over the proper role and nature of the administrative state. That continues.
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Fundamentally today, some follow Waldo and what came to be known as the "Minnowbrook Perspective" which favors greater public participation in government and also believes there is accountability because elected officials are held responsible for their administration's actions.3 Their perspective is that the administrative state is basically charged with applying expert knowledge to implement policies and solve public administration problems. Others are more skeptical that the bureaucracy should even exist. They argue that the current administrative state is beyond what the Founders intended and largely acts outside of the boundaries of the Constitution which vests all lawmaking power in the Congress. From this perspective, public servants are "making laws" because they promulgate rules that are binding. The basic legitimacy of most bureaucratic action is questioned because the delegation by Congress of authority to agencies to implement the laws is generally not seen as legitimate. In general, the overall size of government becomes a target and the bureaucracy is seen as disconnected from and not serving citizens while at the same time curtailing economic activity.4
The Trump Administration is by its own admission not just anti-regulatory, but is strongly anti-administrative state as well. References to "a deep state" conspiracy theory exemplify this President's view that there is an influential and relatively permanent group within the bureaucracy that controls the government and operates mostly independently of changing administrations. From this perspective, attacking the bureaucratic state becomes a logical battle cry. Most previous Republican administrations, however, stopped short of that and focused their efforts on reducing "regulatory burdens." As discussed below, only President Ronald Reagan came close to the anti-administrative state posture of the Trump Administration. In the past though there was still some checking between the branches when anti-regulatory efforts were applied selectively and pushed up against constitutional limits. It is not clear now that those checks are operating during the Trump era.
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Trump's anti-administrative state framing is evident in his administrative actions and also judicial ones. For example, consider the likely impact President Trump's newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh could have on administrative law rulings. Kavanaugh's appointment was highly controversial and there are lingering legitimate concerns over his fitness for the Court given his judicial temperament and moral character. In addition, however, there are serious questions about how he applies particular legal doctrines. For instance, the League of Conservation Voters questions why Kavanaugh seems to apply the "Chevron Doctrine" regarding agency deference inconsistently and "only rel[ies] on agency interpretation when it results in rolling back environmental protections." Other environmental groups express concern over Kavanaugh's application of the "majors questions" doctrine (which disallows agencies to make rules in areas of significant social and economic matters for which Congress did not explicitly delegate authority). Specifically, environmentalists find that while he was a judge, Kavanaugh tended to only question federal regulations that were focused on polluting industries.5 Inconsistent application of legal doctrines is not principled, but it may fit a particular anti-regulatory agenda.
Trump's Anti-Administrative State Agenda and Public Policy Impacts
In general, the Trump Administration will oppose new regulations and seek to rollback existing ones. In October 2018, the Trump White House released its Fall 2018 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions" which documents how agencies have "greatly exceeded" the goals of the administration's "rule-busting" agenda.6 President Trump mandated in Executive Order 13771 that agencies should eliminate the costs of two rules for every new rule adopted. So far, the Administration has cut many rules, 176 in total with 57 of those considered significant rules, and only added 14 new significant regulations. According to the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs issuing the Unified Agenda report, the Trump Administration's deregulation efforts have resulted in $23 billion cost savings for FY 2018.7
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The Brookings Institution's Center on Regulation and Markets is tracking deregulation under President Trump and issues monthly updates on the range of regulatory activity being undertaken to reduce the scope and overall size of the administrative state. The list of regulations targeted encompasses many areas impacting citizens, but rarely garners more than scant mention in the news. Many of these regulatory actions are reversing particular policies put in place by President Barak Obama's administration. President Trump started his attack with the well-covered attempts to dismantle President Obama's signature legislative achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), i.e., Obamacare. Just...
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