President Donald Trump on Feb. 24 signed the Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda executive order, which gives all federal agencies 90 days to produce a list of regulations to be rescinded or replaced.
The executive order also creates a task force and requires agency heads to appoint a regulatory reform officer for each federal agency. The members of the task forces are responsible for identifying regulations to be targeted for repeal or revision.
It will be the job of the reform officer at each agency to enforce the administration’s regulatory priorities, including the Jan. 30 Presidential Executive Order on Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs, which requires “that for every one new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations be identified for elimination, and that the cost of planned regulations be prudently managed and controlled through a budgeting process.”
It is unclear at this point how the president feels about regulations in general or environmental and occupational safety regulations specifically. His messaging has been mixed, sometimes in the same speech.
During his speech before the Conservative Political Action Committee conference on Feb. 24, Trump said: “We’re going to put the regulation industry out of work and out of business.”
Then in the next breath, the president commented: “And by the way, I want regulation. I want to protect our environment. I want regulations for safety.”