This is a guest post from Scott Barton. Like all posts it on this blog the opinions stated are those of the author. You can read more from Pacific Legal here.
It is no secret that there are many government regulations across multiple agencies that are just too burdensome. Thankfully, in January 2017, both the White House and Congress launched a project that aims to roll them all back. The President’s Council of Economic Advisors recently reported that once these reforms kick in, Americans can expect their incomes to rise by $3,100 per household per year, which comes up to yearly savings of $220 billion. That same report also said that $41 billion of that $220 billion can be attributed to deregulation under the Congressional Review Act (CRA).
For the average American family, an extra $3,000 a year means a lot.
Under the CRA, enacted in 1996, Congress was given greater oversight of the regulatory process. Agencies are supposed to send their proposed new rules to Congress. Then when Congress receives the proposed new rules, it has 60 days to nullify them, or those regulations become law.
According to the report:
“Sixteen Obama-era regulations were ultimately nullified by the CRA. The more economically important of these are the Federal rule allowing States to mandate employers to provide retirement accounts (the ‘IRA-mandate rule’), the FCC rule regarding broadband privacy, and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule requiring the public disclosure of foreign payments.”
For more see this list of rules nullified, attempted but failed to be nullified, and currently in the process since 2017.
The reforms put forth by the CRA are very beneficial to taxpayers. However, Americans are still facing too many unnecessary and unconstitutional regulations. The overgrown regulatory state still exists, and there’s still so much we have to do to fight it.
The CRA requires regulatory agencies to send more rules to Congress, and they should be doing more of it. Courts should also compel agencies to comply with the CRA’s requirement.
The progress made so far by the CRA is much appreciated, but the fight continues. It will all be worth it because Americans will be freed from regulatory burdens and be able to prosper, as the President’s Council of Economic Advisors report shows.
Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash