Trump discards Obama’s legacy, one rule at a time
WASHINGTON — Just days after the November election, top aides to Donald Trump huddled with congressional staff members in Speaker Paul Ryan’s suite of offices at the Capitol. The objective: not to get things done, but to undo them — quickly.
For about three months after Inauguration Day, Trump would have the power to wipe away some of his predecessor’s most significant regulations with simple-majority votes from his allies in Congress. But the clock was ticking. An obscure law known as the Congressional Review Act gives lawmakers 60 legislative days to overturn major new regulations issued by federal agencies. After that window closes, sometime in early May, the process gets much more difficult: Executive orders by the president can take years to unwind regulations — well beyond the important 100-day yardstick for new administrations.
So in weekly meetings leading up to Jan. 20, the Trump aides and lawmakers worked from a shared Excel spreadsheet to develop a list of possible targets: rules enacted late in Barack Obama’s presidency they viewed as a vast regulatory overreach that was stifling economic growth.
The result was a historic reversal of government rules in record time. Trump has used the review act as a regulatory wrecking ball, signing 13 bills that erased rules on the environment, labor, financial protections, internet privacy, abortion, education and gun rights. In the law’s 21-year history, it had been used successfully only once before, when President George W. Bush reversed a Clintonera ergonomics rule.
The effort has surpassed its architects’ most ambitious hopes. Andrew Bremberg, the president’s domestic policy chief, said he had thought Congress might be able to use the act to pass five or six bills reversing Obama’s regulations. During the transition effort, no one contemplated more than a dozen, Bremberg said.
“It is a strong and very potent and powerful tool,” he said.
But critics say Trump’s aggressive use of the Congressional Review Act amounts to a blunt and thoughtless assault on rules that would have increased people’s safety, secured their personal information, protected federal lands and improved education.