Rolling back the regulatory state. The Trump administration is reducing the economic burden of regulation, writes Diane Katz:
The Trump administration on Wednesday reported $23 billion in savings from 176 deregulatory actions in fiscal year 2018. Even more consequential, the administration has issued 65 percent fewer "significant" rules—those with costs that exceed $100 million a year—than the Obama administration, and 51 percent fewer than the Bush administration, after 22 months in office. [...]
The administration in fiscal year 2018 took 57 significant deregulatory actions compared to 14 significant regulatory actions, according to Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs data. [...]
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs projects that the fiscal year 2019 caps will reduce regulatory costs, on net, by $18 billion (in present value). In addition, the administration has proposed a range of options for revising the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards and greenhouse gas emissions standards that are projected to save between $120 and $340 billion. And other deregulatory actions are in process, including a rollback of the Obama administration's signature global warming regime.
To put that in perspective, annual regulatory costs under the Obama administration increased by $122 billion, according to analyses by The Heritage Foundation.
The regulatory budgeting established in Trump's Executive Order 13771 is intended to inject a modicum of economic discipline into rulemaking. If agencies are compelled to restrict the costs imposed on the public, they must engage in a type of rolling retrospective review of the vast accumulation of rules that comprise more than 185,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulation—up from some 138,000 in 2000.
Under guidance from the Office of Management and Budget, only "significant" regulatory actions (rules and guidance documents) count toward the cap. However, offsetting costs may be derived from a broader set of deregulatory actions that would result in a net savings, including rules and guidance; streamlined record-keeping and reporting requirements; and some actions related to international regulatory cooperation.
According to Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs data, the administration has achieved $33 billion in net regulatory savings since taking office.
[Diane Katz, "Here's How Much Red Tape Trump Has Cut," The Daily Signal, October 17]
What to do about Saudi Arabia. If it determines that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration will have the option of using the Global Magnitsky Act to impose sanctions on the Saudi officials involved, writes Larry Diamond:
Now we face a great test of whether an American resident—a journalist, a public intellectual, and a forthright dissident, to whom America gave both refuge and inspiration—can be murdered in a third country with impunity by a ruler and a state that have brazenly acted above the law. With every new incident of international murder and intimidation, our values, our commitment to freedom, and our national interest in a world governed by law are under challenge. We must make it clear not only to the Saudi monarchy but to all the world's dictators that they cannot murder their opponents with impunity. They must know that there will be consequences, and that we will hold them personally responsible.
This is why the Congress broadened the original 2012 Magnitsky law by passing in 2016 a Global Magnitsky Act that provides for targeted sanctions—travel bans and asset freezes—on gross violators of human rights. These provisions must now be applied to all Saudi officials responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, to Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his senior leadership, and to other rulers in Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere who make a practice of murdering their opponents at home and abroad. And our democratic allies in Europe—beginning with Britain, which (like the United States) has welcomed into its banks and real estate markets huge volumes of ill-gotten wealth from dictatorships—must join in imposing targeted sanctions.
All of this must be based on evidence, and if the Trump Administration will not seek it and provide it, Congress must demand it and subpoena it. For a time in the 1970s, it was Congress that took the lead in pressing for a new American resolve to defend human rights in the world and demand accountability for violations. It made a difference then, helping to ignite a period of sweeping global democratic change. Now, Congress must take the lead again.
[Larry Diamond, "License to Kill," The American Interest, October 18]
What is the purpose of the Supreme Court? Conservatives and progressives have very different answers to that question, write John Yoo and James C. Phillips:
Before they devolved into an ugly political and personal brawl, Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings revealed, among other things, the fault lines in American constitutional politics.
Democratic senators, as well as their expert witnesses called in opposition, advanced a view of a judge as simply the enabler of a political party's policy preferences. They cross-examined Judge Kavanaugh on the specific outcomes he had reached in cases relating to certain groups of interest: minorities, women, environmental organizations, and the like. In their view, the only difference between a judge and a congressman is the former wears a robe.
Influenced by the Legal Realism movement, which is the basic approach taught in most American law schools today, these Democrats find law and facts to be mostly smoke and mirrors. Instead, to them, judges really exercise raw and unchecked political power in determining winners and losers. Judging is about outcomes, not process. To be a good judge is to pick the right winners. Lady Justice is not blind — she metes out justice with both eyes wide open so that she can favor the preferred class or group.
If judges simply advance political goals, then Democrats were at least honest in their desire for a judge who sympathizes with their favorite groups. That's why President Obama said he was looking for judges with "empathy," though undoubtedly it was not empathy for corporations, for example, but for groups he favored. Under this view, if you are a Democrat, you should only pick judges who vote for unions, racial minorities, and criminal suspects. If you are a Republican, you want judges who always vote for corporations and the police.
Republican senators, however, rejected this approach. Their view requires judges to be indifferent to the demographics of the parties before them. In Chief Justice John Roberts's metaphor, judges are umpires who call balls and strikes, but do not promote personal preferences or prejudices. In other words, as Justice Kagan put it in her confirmation hearings, "the question is not, 'Do you like this party or do you like that party? Do you favor this cause or do you favor that cause?' . . . The question is what the law requires."
[John Yoo and James C. Phillips, "A Clash of Judicial Visions," National Review, October 19]
Government ruined health insurance. Merrill Matthews writes:
The purpose of health insurance has been flipped on its head.
Health insurance (like any insurance) is supposed to protect us from catastrophic losses. Under Obamacare's regulatory onslaught, insurance increasingly protects patients from costs they could easily pay, while exposing them to costs they could never afford—on top of the sky-high premiums.
Obamacare requires that all contraceptives be available free, even though most of them are inexpensive and could be easily paid for out of pocket by the vast majority of women. But if someone is diagnosed with cancer and the doctor prescribes an amazing new drug that will cost several thousand dollars a month, cancer patients may find their insurance leaves them exposed to very high costs.
Ultimately, consumers are paying more and more for less and less. They are more exposed to high out-of-pocket costs, both in deductibles and co-insurance, than ever before. Health insurance, especially in the individual market, which is largely dominated by the Obamacare exchanges, has failed America.
[Merrill Matthews, "How Health Insurance Failed America," Institute for Policy Innovation, October 2]
Red Rising. Eric Boehm reports:
The federal government finished the 2018 fiscal year—it ended on September 30—a whopping $779 billion in the red, the largest annual budget deficit since 2012.
The current fiscal year is likely to see an even larger deficit, potentially in excess of $1 trillion.
The Treasury Department's final data for the 2018 fiscal year, released Monday, shows that the deficit was driven by a combination of higher spending and additional borrowing. The latter was necessary to finance the former, of course, though last year's tax cuts contributed to the widening gap between how much money the federal government takes in and how much it spends. [...]
The $779 billion deficit for fiscal year 2018 was up 17 percent from the $666 billion deficit recorded in fiscal year 2017. The data show that the deficit is growing faster than the economy as a whole. In 2017, the federal deficit was equal to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), but grew to 3.9 percent of GDP in 2018.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, current policies have the United States on course for a $2 trillion deficit before the end of the next decade.
[Eric Boehm, "It's Official: 2018 Federal Deficit Largest Since 2012," Reason, October 15]
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