Leashes Come Off Wall Street, Gun Sellers, Miners and More
"'He's Going to Continue to Create Chaos'"
By ERIC LIPTON and BINYAMIN APPELBAUMMARCH 5, 2017
People shooting firearms at a screen at an exhibit last May during the National Rifle Association Convention in Louisville, Ky. The gun-rights group lobbied against a rule that would have effectively prevented most people with disabling mental illnesses from purchasing firearms. Credit Ty Wright for The New York Times
These are just a few of the more than 90 regulations that federal agencies and the Republican-controlled Congress have delayed, suspended or reversed in the month and a half since President Trump took office, according to a tally by The New York Times.
The emerging effort — dozens of additional rules could be eliminated in the coming weeks — represents one of the most significant shifts in regulatory policy in recent decades. It is the leading edge of what Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, described late last month .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/stephen-bannon-cpac-speech.html?_r=0 .. as “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”
“After a relentless, eight-year regulatory onslaught that loaded unprecedented burdens on businesses and the economy, relief is finally on the way,” Thomas J. Donohue, the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, wrote in a memo last week .. https://www.uschamber.com/above-the-fold/regulatory-relief-the-way .
But dozens of public interest groups — environmentalists, labor unions, consumer watchdogs — have sounded the alarm about the potential threat to Americans’ well-being. “Americans did not vote to be exposed to more health, safety, environmental and financial dangers,” said one letter .. https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/groups-oppose-regulatory-executive-order-letter-20170228.pdf , signed by leaders of 137 nonprofit groups, that was sent to the White House last week.
In other cases, the Obama-era rules under attack have drawn objections even from some liberal groups that called them examples of overreach, like the American Civil Liberties Union’s protest of a system to block mentally ill people from buying guns. Get the Morning Briefing by Email
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The regulatory retrenchment is unfolding on multiple fronts.
New White House appointees at agencies including the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have also personally intervened in recent weeks to block, delay or start the process to nullify other rules, such as a requirement that corporations publish tallies comparing chief executive pay with average employee wages.
President Trump signing back-to-back executive orders last week in Washington. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
“By any empirical measure, it is a level of activity that has never been seen,” said Curtis W. Copeland .. https://www.acus.gov/contacts/curtis-w-copeland , who spent decades studying federal regulatory policy on behalf of Congress while at the Congressional Research Service and the Government Accountability Office. “It is unprecedented.”
[ ah, i was just thinking hey, it's fair that every incoming administration would look at the worth of individual regulations, but Trump's mob are simply eliminating regulation just because they are regulations .. it's an anti-federal government ideology gone mad. ]
Presidents wield considerable influence over the rule-making process. They set the agenda and appoint the rule-makers, and, since the Reagan administration, a White House office has reviewed every major regulation to try to ensure that benefits to society exceeded compliance costs .. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41974.pdf . It is not uncommon for new presidents to make quick changes in regulatory policy or try to reverse certain last-minute rules their predecessors enacted.
Barack Obama, shortly after being elected president, pressed the E.P.A. to let the State of California set more stringent limits on auto emissions, a proposal that the Bush administration had rejected.
But the courts have generally held that new administrations need to justify such reversals. The best-known case involved the Reagan administration, which tried to rescind a rule .. http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/24/us/airbag-regulation-on-cars-rescinded.html .. requiring airbags in passenger vehicles. The courts found the move unjustified.
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md., last month. Credit Joshua Roberts/Reuters
“It is not a relevant or adequate defense to say that the president told us to do it,” said Michael Eric Herz .. http://www.cardozo.yu.edu/directory/michael-eric-herz , a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.
It is a radical role reversal for state attorneys general — their Republican colleagues spent the last eight years suing the federal government to block the enactment of many Obama-era rules. Now the Democrats are planning to try to prevent many of these same rules from being revoked.
“Demolish the administrative state? I don’t even know what that means,” Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts said during a visit to Washington last week, where she and other state attorneys general met with Mr. Trump at the White House. “But we need to wake up to what is actually going on.”
Wilbur Ross, left, the new commerce secretary, and Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, before a strategy and policy forum with business leaders at the White House last month. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times
[ Which is impossible to reconcile with lifting the ban on hunters using lead bullets, for only the lifting of one of so many designed to protect the environment mentioned above. ]
The reversals by federal regulators are happening, at times, at an extraordinary speed. Lawyers representing the National Mining Association, the American Petroleum Institute and other fossil fuel trade groups and companies asked the Interior Department on Feb. 17 .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3480299-10-Examples-Industries-Push-Followed-by-Trump.html#document/p20/a341248 .. to suspend a new rule changing the way these companies pay royalties for oil, gas or coal extracted from federal lands.
While the lawyers called the requirement “impractical and in some cases impossible,” environmentalists and even conservative nonprofit groups like Taxpayers for Common Sense praised the effort, saying that for decades energy companies had been underpaying the federal government. The new standard has been estimated to push up federal revenue by as much as $85 million annually .. https://onrr.gov/laws_r_d/frnotices/pdfdocs/433530.pdf .
Ryan Zinke, secretary of the interior, arriving Thursday for his first day in the position in which he revoked a rule against lead-based ammunition on federal lands. Credit Interior Deparment, via Associated Press
This shift in federal regulatory policy is already having implications for tens of thousands of citizens nationwide.
Nearly two years ago, the Social Security Administration first moved to set up a new system that would automatically turn over to the Justice Department .. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44752.pdf .. information it collects on Americans who are receiving federal benefits based on a disabling mental illness for inclusion in a database used for gun background checks.
Mike Weaver, a poultry farmer and president of a small-farm group called the Organization for Competitive Markets, said he was concerned about pushback against a rule that would make it easier for chicken farmers to sue chicken processors. “These are regulations that we want implemented,” he said. Credit Jay Paul for The New York Times
A total of 46 such Congressional Review Act resolutions are now pending .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3480518-CRA-Resolutions-Table-0303.html .. in Congress, on topics including air pollution, unemployment compensation, endangered species listings, debit card fees and oil and gas drilling on federal lands as well as the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf.
The efforts have been praised by telecommunications giants, like Comcast, but condemned by consumer advocates.
The administration started its campaign against regulation on the afternoon of Inauguration Day, with a memo from Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, instructing agencies to halt work on new regulations and to delay putting completed regulations into effect.
Such delays are not uncommon with new presidents — both George W. Bush and Mr. Obama did the same, to differing degrees. And certain measures are still going into effect as the Trump administration gets underway, including one that prohibits smoking in public housing nationwide .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/nyregion/us-will-ban-smoking-in-public-housing-nationwide.html .. as of Feb. 3.
Still, the general Trump administration freeze has drawn broad opposition, some of it surprising. The Department of Agriculture has delayed a rule that would make it easier for chicken farmers to sue chicken processors. Business groups, including the National Federation of Independent Business, want to kill the rule.
But small-scale chicken farmers are fighting back.
Mike Weaver, a West Virginia farmer who said he had voted for Mr. Trump and was pleased with most of what he had seen so far, said he wished Mr. Trump would meet with farmers.
“I’d love to have a visit with the president about this, to tell him that these are federal regulations, yes, but these are good regulations,” said Mr. Weaver, the president of a small-farm group called the Organization for Competitive Markets .. http://competitivemarkets.com/mikeweaverbio/ . “These are regulations that we want implemented.”
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