With respect to the Trump Administration EO directing agencies to target regulations for elimination:
Agencies develop regulations in response to legislation. That’s how our government works: The legislators pass laws, and the executive agencies implement them.
There has never been an instance where an executive agency proposes regulations that they aren’t required to by a law passed by Congress. Who has the time? Besides, regulatory agencies are subject to a constant stream of lawsuits to ensure that the regulations they issue are in line with the law.
The idea that Federal regulatory agencies are just going to pick regulations at random to offset new regulations is ridiculous: Those regulations targeted for elimination are required by law, and have a constituency that has lawyers. Likewise, if new legislation requires regulatory action to implement, then the agencies have no choice but to develop and issue those regulations, or face a raft of lawsuits.
An Executive Order has little to no weight in litigation concerning regulatory implementation of statutory requirements. What it may do is give Executive Agents an excuse for slowing down the regulatory process, but that was likely to be constipated under a Republican Congress anyway. It may also give US EPA an excuse to slowdown enforcement, but most enforcement is on the state level anyway, and they aren’t going to give up the fees, fines, and mitigation project funds.
What we’re more likely to see is Congress passing amendments to RCRA, the CAAA, CWA, SDWA, TSCA, etc., that will require amendments to existing regulations to implement. Will they be able to do so under this new EO without getting tied up in court on their proposed eliminations?
This looks to my eye to be another poorly thought out spasm of Executive action to gratify the ignorant, with no awareness of how it will actually play out in our governmental structure.
(Disclosure: I’m a regulator, of sorts. I’ve worked in the environmental regulatory compliance field for 26 years as a compliance auditor for Federal agencies, a trainer of auditors, and as a researcher developing tools for maintaining compliance.)