Trump's Regulatory Legacy Will Be through Congress, Not Regulators.

• Author: Batkins, Sam
• Position: BRIEFLY NOTED

Much has been made of former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt's tenure--not only the scandals, but his deregulatory agenda. Based on press reports, one would think that if President Barack Obama's EPA finalized a regulation, Pruitt's EPA tried to undo it.

Despite the public perception that Pruitt and President Trump's other regulators are working to reverse all that Obama's regulators implemented, it's arguable that the only lasting regulatory results of Trump's time in office so far are products of Capitol Hill: 16 Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions of disapproval and modest legislation to amend the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

There's no debate that Trump's deregulatory agenda has resulted in published regulatory savings for the nation. According to the American Action Forum, since 2017, regulators have published nearly 60 final rules that cut costs, including three that would reduce total burdens by more than $1 billion. However, for those to become real savings will require that the changes survive judicial scrutiny, and currently there is a host of lawsuits challenging virtually every major deregulatory action. The EPA alone has lost seven deregulatory attempts in the courts over the last 18 months.

The administration won't lose every suit, but the president's deregulatory legacy will be substantially muted by the courts and by Congress if Democrats retake control after this fall's elections. Obviously, a new occupant in the White House in 2021 will immediately seek to reverse the deregulatory posture of the Trump administration and his policies could be an afterthought a decade from now. That's a far cry from President Ronald Reagan's record of regulatory reform.

CRA's second act?/ Before 2017, the CRA had only been invoked successfully once, to rescind an ergonomics rule in 2001. But in less than two years of the Trump administration, 16 regulations have been axed, including five major rules. With total cost savings from CRA rescissions exceeding $4 billion, that's a legacy of achievement in an environment where costs seemingly increase daily.

What is more noteworthy from a philosophical, partisan, and structural perspective, however, is that both Democrats and Republicans now look to the CRA to address rules from the executive of which they disapprove. Two years ago, some Democrats and progressives argued the CRA was unconstitutional and special interest groups still push for Congress to tie its own...