The NewCo Daily: Today’s Top Stories
It makes a great sound-bite: For every new rule federal regulators under President Trump want to add to the books, they’re going to have to scrap two existing regulations. That’s the gist of an executive order Trump signed Monday — “a big one,” as the president called it — in a move to fulfill a campaign promise to reduce the regulatory burden on American business (The Atlantic).
Sounds fine. But wait a minute: Um, how do you actually count a rule? Is there some standard unit of regulation? Most regulations are complicated and include a lot of different standards, guidelines, and conditions; that complexity is why businesses complain so much about them. Does a particular environmental rule — about, say, coal power-plant emissions — count as one single rule or many? And rules vary immensely in the burden they place on businesses; if you institute one humongous new rule and scrap two trivial ones, what kind of win is that?
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