Well, sure, there are better ways he could have done this (possible presidential slogan!).
I feel like “not necessarily terrible” is a pretty low bar here, and I’m standing by it.
I haven’t read the thread, but this is what I thought on the way into the office this morning:
New Regulation #483
Per Presidential Decree, Regulations #13 and #337 are rescinded so that new Regulation #483 can be enacted.
New Regulation #483 provides [insert text of Regulations #13 and #337], and [the new Regulation text].
So two regulations are rescinded, and one new regulation is added, just like the law says. It just happens that the new regulation includes the rescinded ones as part of its text.
Maybe you should. The OP contains a link that shows how it is supposed to work.
Grin! You could collapse all 483 regulations into one single “omnibus” regulation!
I suggest we call this level of understanding “Trumpian”. I’d love to see this move into the vocabulary.
“Just ignore Bob. He has a very Trumpian understanding of NFL rules and regulations.”
What, with a pizza party going on? Are nuts? 
I thought the way it was supposed to work is that you remove two regulations for every new regulation you make. So what I was saying is that they can do that – remove two regulations, and then have the new regulation incorporate both of the old regulations so that you don’t lose anything.
But what happens after all of the regulations are incorporated into a single regulation, and you want to add another one and don’t have two to remove?
That’s the evil genius of it. However you do it, you will at some point reach a state where no more rules can be added.
Can regulations be modified?
If an old one said, “No more than two ounces of arsenic,” and they want to change it to “no more than one ounce of arsenic,” is that a “new regulation?”
The would depend on The Director and his boss, Trump…who has stated that his goal is to gut as many regulations as he can.
In which direction do you think they would rule?
Its also important to recall that the UK and Canada have Parliamentary systems, where the Prime Minister ( the functional equivalent of POTUS) also has for the most part personal control of the legislature. This means there is really nothing like the equivalent of EOs as understood in the US, This makes a difference, I think, because the two-for-one rule becomes a guideline rather than a hard rule.
The idea of reducing the burden of useless enthusiasms repented at leisure is a good one. The idea of forcing the bureaucracy to evaluate priorities internally with real discipline is also a good idea.
The difficulty with a strict 2 for 1 rule is that it is impossible to determine a priori what counts as a regulation. Is it an entire code (say, a building code) or a line item like “wall studs must be separated by no more than 90cm”? Some content is given to the idea by the cost calculations involved, but that does not really address the problem at the level of principle. If you introduce an amendment that studs should be no more than 100 cm apart, that will reduce builders’ costs, but is it a new rule or the removal of an old one? The answer is it is neither, or both, and this highlights the conceptual problem of a meta rule that purports to count rules without any nuance. Eventually, there are so many case-by-case judgments to be made that the coherence of the meta rule breaks down and everyone gives up.
These sort of initiatives tend to be seen early in the life of a fresh government, but tend to fade once the definitional problems make the rule essentially arbitrary, and the impetus fades in the face of the realpolitik demand for knee jerk rules to respond quickly to outrages du jour. if the public demands a ban on toad-licking because some rag says it’s now a thing and won’t somebody think of the children, it gets harder politically to object that two other rules have to go.
Here are a couple that can probably be discarded.
I guess the idea is to force the removal of a lot of nuisance regulations that cost businesses money with little to no real benefit. Every law isn’t Glass–Steagall.
Exactly. This is a page out of The Idiot’s Guide to Politics.
May I just say you’re lucky? In my house, its shoes and handbags that are supposed to follow this pruning regimen.
There is “seondary legislation” where Parliament has granted a particular minister the power to make regulations and orders on the implementation of primary legislation. Some sorts of secondary legislation go through Parliament on an accelerated “take it or leave it” basis, others don’t require further approval.
But in general, when Prime Ministers and their parties make such a promise, it doesn’t take long for the civil service either to persuade them to forget it or to find a way round it. All you need to do is find two or three existing regulations that might well need updating or minor technical amendments anyway and combine them into one new regulation. Job done.
Of course, Trump has violated an executive order in issuing of his EOs:
Trump Muslim Ban Executive Order Violated Executive Order About Executive Orders
So sad.
All these EO’s are no longer actual laws. They’re props in a propaganda battle. Who cares that they are as flimsy as…as the Cold War Era nuclear missiles featured in USSR propaganda footage, missiles that were futen cardboard props? Moscow paraded dummy missiles | The Independent | The Independent
One area where this may be especially problematic is the FAA - this EO has delayed the implementation of new FAA regs which on the surface may sound good, but many of those new regulations are Airworthiness Directives which pertain to flight safety.
I mean, yay, some time ago they got rid of the regulation prohibiting the wearing of spurs while flying an airplane which I think pretty much everyone agreed was outdated but a lot of the aviation regulations are, as they say, “written in blood” - they’re often there because someone was maimed or killed. Pruning them occasionally is a good idea, but wholesale mowing them down is not.
Then just do that. A President who actually cared about helping American businesses get on with business would some time and effort into finding regulations with more cost than reward and getting rid of them.
That would, however, be
- Genuinely difficult, requiring the time and attention of actual professionals, and
- Not afford Trump the chance to sign an executive order in a fancy leather folder and show it off to the cameras.
If anyone is interested, the WH has put out guidance on the EO:
Delegated legislation is, of course, common in Commonwealth countries. But they are not really like EOs. Parliament makes a conscious choice, within narrowly defined limits, to leave the machinery details to the executive so that they can be tinkered with relatively easily. EOs of the sort we are talking about are closer kin to the Royal Prerogative, but that exists in a much more narrowly confined space than EOs.