Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
After a calamitous first week in office, the Trump Train has continued barreling along this week with seeming utter disregard for rails. Following up on idiotic executive orders concerning travel bans and starting a medieval arms race with Mexican drug cartels, Trump offered up something that actually seemed promising on Monday, and then promptly walked it back.
Trump signed an executive order Monday that he said would require the government to end two existing regulations whenever it enacts a new one – an idea plagiarized from a Canadian law passed over a year ago that trades one old unnecessary regulation for new unnecessary one. As America has tons and tons of dumb regulations and a dumber-than-hell government that keeps making new ones, this sounded like a win-win. Theoretically, under such a law the federal government could mathematically “regulate” itself out of existence, allowing the resulting anarchy to trigger a new phase in human evolution that takes homo sapiens sapiens to our destiny – to exist without violent government threatening us with cages or death for keeping our own property or acting in any one of hundreds of ways that victimizes no one.
Alas, this is the real world and the federal government of the United States we’re talking about, so, in reality, the executive order is mostly bullshit.
“The White House confirmed on Monday that a new executive order to slash regulations will not apply to independent regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, a spokeswoman said.
President Donald Trump complained about the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law in a meeting with small business owners, in which he referred to the law as a ‘disaster.’ He made his remarks shortly before signing the executive order,” reads two-thirds of a brief Reuters piece.
So, wait. I thought he said:
“President Donald Trump signed an order on Monday that will seek to dramatically pare back federal regulations by requiring agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new rule introduced.
‘This will be the biggest such act that our country has ever seen. There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be normalized control,’ Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office, surrounded by a group of small business owners,” says the first two ‘graphs of Ayesha Rascoe’s article in Reuters.
So, the idea is to pare back federal regulations, but the order doesn’t apply to “independent regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission.” Huh? First, the Securities and Exchange Commission is a regulatory agency that is itself a part of the federal government; it’s only “independent” in the sense that it isn’t part of one of the federal government’s too-many federal departments that are headed by a member of the Cabinet. It is “independent” in that Trump can’t fire its head. The fact it is “independent” is also wholly irrelevant to the stated aim of the executive order; it’s a regulatory agency and its regulations end up effecting citizens, not just the state.
In fact, reading past the headlines of any story I could find on this executive order simply reveals how diluted it actually is.
“The new order does not require that the repeal of the two regulations be done simultaneously with the release of additional rules, the official said.
‘This vests tremendous power and responsibility in the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) director to ensure the president’s direction in how we manage this across the government,’ the official said.
Certain categories of regulations will be exempt from this new policy, including those dealing with the military and national security. The OMB director will also have the ability to waive this policy in certain instances.
Trump has tapped U.S. Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina to lead the OMB,” Reuters reported.
So, there’s no real timeline set for the repeal of the two old regulations and they needn’t be repealed before a new law goes into effect. Furthermore, Mulvaney gets to decide to waive this policy in “certain instances.” And, it doesn’t apply to “independent” regulatory agencies within the federal government nor does it apply to the military or any of the various agencies that deal with “national security.”
Of course, the reason this executive order is feel-good bullshit intended to mollify “small-government conservatives” and TEA partyers and nothing more is because it comes from government; and government is a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s android in “T2: Judgement Day,” it cannot self-terminate. In fact, it cannot even go emo and engage in any sort of self-harm. It will never make itself smaller, weaker or less powerful and less intrusive. And, when it says it’s going to, like Trump did on Monday, you can safely bet that such a statement is exactly like every other one ever issued by the federal government – a lie.
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