President Trump will kick off the new fiscal year Monday by redoubling his administration’s efforts to cut red tape, a move he views as a key driver of economic resurgence.
In a speech in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Trump will call attention to “the benefit that reform can have for ordinary Americans,” said Neomi Rao, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Mr. Trump also has issued a memo directing federal agencies to lower the overall cost of their regulations in fiscal 2018.
The president has made regulatory reform a priority in his first eight months, issuing an executive order that requires two regulations be eliminated for every new one implemented. So far, Ms. Rao said, the administration has imposed four new rules and eliminated 10.
In a speech to manufacturers on Friday, the president called his administration’s effort “a groundbreaking campaign.”
“We have taken unprecedented steps to remove job-killing regulations that sap the energy, creativity and dynamism from our country,” he said. “We are cutting regulations at a pace that has never even been thought of before.”
He said some regulation is necessary, “but we don’t need 35 regulations to take care of one item. We don’t need to go through nine different agencies to get something taken off. We want beautiful, fast, efficient regulation that works.”
Ms. Reo said the administration’s rule-making since January has resulted in savings of $300 million in annualized costs for businesses, a marked shift from the first year of the Obama administration.
“In the eight years of the previous administration, they imposed about $80 billion in annualized costs on the private sector,” she said.
After the president’s speech, 10 federal agencies will hold discussions Monday afternoon seeking input on targeting for eliminating regulations that are ineffective or duplicative.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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