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The White Houses Office of Management and Budget detailed Thursday how it would jettison hundreds of existing or planned regulations as part of its larger push to ease federal restrictions on the private sector, upending federal policies on labor, the environment and public health.

The list, issued as part of a semiannual report on the entire governments regulatory agenda, shows the extent to which this administration is determined to erase many of the Obama administrations policy priorities. In several instances, the administration is dropping rules aimed at tightening worker safety standards or omitting species the government had pledged to protect under the Endangered Species Act. In other cases, it is proposing new regulations that provide employers with more leeway in how they run their businesses or report their activities to federal officials.

The Trump administration said it was pulling or suspending 860 pending regulations. Of those, 469 were being completely withdrawn. Another 391 were being set aside or reevaluated. These proposed regulations could be revisited at some point or dropped altogether.

The rules the administration targeted govern everything from the basics of everyday living, such as a product safety standard for mattresses flammability when it comes to cigarettes, to what sort of precautions construction firms should be required to take so their workers are not run over by other vehicles on site.

I cannot express to you enough how much things have changed when it comes to the regulatory burden, the attitudes towards regulations, in this country, and you are just going to see more of that for the next eight years, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Thursday. Our philosophy has been that the previous administration fudged the numbers that they either overstated the benefits to people or understated the costs and we are going to look at it in a much more pragmatic perspective.

Consumer and worker advocates countered that Trump officials were scrapping critical government safeguards, and the implications of these actions could ripple across the country for years.

These rollbacks of critical public protections will leave American workers, consumers and children vulnerable on a daily basis, said Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate for Public Citizens Congress Watch division, to risks such as air and water pollution, unsafe products and tainted food, dangerous workplaces and a newly deregulated Wall Street that once again could threaten economic collapse.

[Trump undertakes the most ambitious regulatory rollback since Reagan]

President Trump has promised to eliminate 80percent of all federal regulations, arguing that the plethora of rules is harming economic growth and making it harder for companies to create more jobs.

But OMB officials have suggested that could be very difficult to achieve because many regulations are written to enforce congressionally authorized laws, and the White House cannot unilaterally remove them.

Susan Dudley, who directs George Washington Universitys Regulatory Studies Center, said in an interview that the agenda does signify a slower pace of new regulatory actions, although it was too early to know whether officials would follow through on their pledge to eliminate two regulations for every new one they propose, and ensure these actions did not add to the federal deficit.

Still, the White Houses updated regulatory agenda on Thursday shows that it is taking steps to freeze, slow or remove many pending regulations, some of which have been in the works and at times, languishing for years. For example, one proposal that the Trump administration is suspending would have created new standards for the way meat and poultry products are processed. That rule was first proposed in 2001.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist and former Congressional Budget Office director, said in an interview that at the end of Obamas second term there was a lot of overreach as it finalized a slew of rules, and the new administration is taking corrective action. Holtz-Eakin cited a recent study by the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, which estimated that the previous administrations regulations imposed a cumulative burden of $890billion in compliance costs.

Theres no question the Obama administration went too far, Holtz-Eakin said. The notion that you should stop and reexamine things is perfectly sensible.

Manufacturers have also hailed these moves: In the National Association of Manufacturers most recent survey of its members, 80percent say that Trumps actions on regulation are headed in the right direction.

Raj Nayak, the National Employment Law Projects director of research, said in an interview that the regulatory rollbacks touted in the new agenda have a consistent theme. They are deemphasizing the projects that help workers, said Nayak, who served as deputy chief of staff to Obamas second labor secretary, Tom Perez.

The administration has touted several regulatory changes already, including the Environmental Protection Agencys move to repeal a sweeping rule governing what water bodies qualify for federal protection and one limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said the agencys move to withdraw 25 separate regulations reflects the administrations commitment to refocusing the agency on our core mission of protecting the nations air, water and land while reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens on Americans.

And in late March, the Energy Department withdrew proposed regulations designed to make products more energy efficient. The regulations concerned gas-fired indoor or outdoor fireplaces, natural gas compressors and computers.

The list the White House issued Thursday was notable for what it said about its plans to address lower-profile measures that govern the operations of businesses and other regulated entities.

Mulvaney noted that many of these federal requirements often escape public notice: None of them are very sexy, none of them are very glamorous, none of them really rise to the level of getting national attention.

[EPA rules emerge as major target after administration solicits industry input]

But they often have major implications for how companies operate and what sort of federal enforcement actions they will face.

The Labor Department, for example, removed from its long-term agenda a proposal to stiffen exposure standards for styrene, a chemical used in plastics that has been identified as a carcinogen, and 1-bromopropane, a chemical solvent that is a neurotoxin. It is also jettisoning plans to change permissible exposure limits for some substances that were set in 1971.

In a 2011 letter to the department, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote that given the fact that the permissible exposure limits were set four decades ago, they do not reflect current technology or contemporary understandings of exposure levels and should be updated.

Clearly, what this administration is saying is that no further work will be done on health standards, said David Michaels, who headed Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration under Obama and now serves as a public health professor at George Washington Universitys Milken Institute School of Public Health.

Labor Department spokesman Michael Trupo said department officials are not commenting beyond what is in the agenda.

In a major win for restaurateurs, Labor indicated Thursday it would reverse an Obama-era rule that prohibited them from sharing some of the tips that servers earning the full minimum wage received with other employees, such as cooks and dishwashers. The National Restaurant Association had challenged the 2011 rule, and there had been conflicting rulings from the 9th and 10th Circuit on whether the regulation was legal.

Angelo Amador, executive director of the associations Restaurant Law Center, described the move as a reaction to the years of litigation, noting that the rule had been stayed since 2013.

Amador said that confining tips to just servers creates a disparity between them and those in the back of the house washing dishes and preparing the meal. Theyre all working towards the same goal, he said. If your food is burned or your plates are dirty, you might not get a good tip.

But Nayak argued that by allowing the employer to pool tips, Its essentially subsidizing wages that the restaurant should pay. Fundamentally, the employer should not be taking a portion of the tips.

And while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to designate protections for several species under the Endangered Species Act by Sept.30, nearly a dozen of these measures are missing from OMBs agenda. Federal officials are under court order to determine whether to list the Kirtlands snake, a rare and secretive reptile in the Midwest, but there is no mention of the species in the document.

Many of these species are highly imperiled and need all the protection they can get, said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group.

Abby Phillip and Chris Mooney contributed to this report.

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Trump administration cancels hundreds of Obama-era regulations - Washington Post

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney accused the Obama administration Thursday of keeping a secret list of proposed regulations during Mr. Obamas eight-year regulatory onslaught against businesses, and touted President Trumps rollback of more than 800 Obama-era rules and proposals.

Of the 860 rules or proposed rules that the Trump administration has killed, 179 came from what he called Mr. Obamas secret list. As Trump aides combed through the books, they found pending proposals that included rules on hardwood plywood research and new requirements for contamination control in cattle slaughter operations.

They had a bunch of things that they wanted to regulate, Mr. Mulvaney said of the Obama administrations first term. They just didnt want to tell you about it. They thought it would be bad for their re-election prospects in 2012, so they created a secret list of regs that were not disclosed to you folks. We are disclosing it.

When Trump officials threatened to disclose the list, Mr. Mulvaney said, bureaucrats in various Cabinet agencies came up with those 860 things that we got rid of.

There will be no more of that, said the Office of Management and Budget director. We will not have a secret list. We will not have a hidden list of regulations that were thinking about doing but were not going to tell you about. Thats going to end effective immediately. In fact, it already has ended.

Cass Sunstein, who headed Mr. Obamas office of regulatory affairs in his first term, did not respond to a request for comment.

Even as the Trump administration was accusing its predecessor of a hidden agenda, a government watchdog group faulted the Trump White House for acting with unprecedented secrecy in its first six months.

Our conclusion on the Trump administrations record on open government at six months is inescapable: This is a secretive administration, allergic to transparency, ethically compromised and hostile to the essential role that journalism plays in a democracy, said a report by the Sunlight Foundation.

During Mr. Trumps first six months in office, he has eliminated 16 major regulations that had cost businesses at least $100 million per year each. He has introduced only one major regulation, pertaining to mercury in wastewater.

At a White House event to showcase advances in U.S. pharmaceutical packaging, Mr. Trump said the drug industry and patients will soon benefit from fewer regulations at the Food and Drug Administration.

Amazing things are happening there, and I think were going to be announcing some of them over the next two months, the president said. Were going to be streamlining, as we have in other industries, regulations so that advancements can reach patients quickly.

A recent study by the conservative American Action Forum found that Mr. Trump has released 8 percent of the historical average of rules issued by Presidents Obama, George W. Bush and Clinton.

Holding up a stack of paper of Obama regulations with both hands, Mr. Mulvaney challenged reporters at the White House, Were you healthy and safe before this came out? Yes. And youll be healthy and safe when its gone.

Cutting regulations is a pillar of Mr. Trumps economic program as he seeks to return the U.S. economy to an annual growth rate of 3 percent or more, a number that hasnt been reached in 10 years.

Federal agencies under Mr. Trump have withdrawn 469 proposed regulations from a report last fall under Mr. Obama. Another 391 proposed regulations have been delayed for further evaluation.

Trump officials said the Obama administration introduced rules in the last six months of 2016 that would have imposed $6.8 billion in annual costs on the economy, while the new rules during Mr. Trumps first five months have imposed no costs.

We had zero, Mr. Mulvaney said.

He said the previous administration often fudged the numbers when it proposed regulations.

They either overstated the benefit or understated the cost, Mr. Mulvaney said.

When Mr. Trump took office, he issued a two-for-one directive to set the tone of his war on regulation: For every proposed regulation, two others were to be cut.

The regulatory rollback has provided Mr. Trump with one of his smoothest areas of cooperation with congressional Republicans, who aided the push early in his term by deploying the seldom-used Congressional Review Act to repeal Obama-era rules.

Weve seen the largest regulatory rollback since Ronald Reagan, and theres much more to come, said Sen. David Perdue, Georgia Republican.

Among Mr. Trumps future easing of regulations, the Interior Department plans to reduce paperwork for outdoorsmen and fish restoration programs, and the Labor Department is planning to streamline the approval process for new apprenticeship programs.

Mr. Mulvaney said most of the actions are not headline-grabbing but the impact of cutting red tape improves the business climate and the lives of average Americans.

None of them are very sexy, he said of the 860 rules. I describe them as a slow cancer that can come from regulatory burdens that we put on our people. Its not going to change the world, but when you do that 860 times in the first six months, it can have a benefit.

The conservative Competitiveness Enterprise Institute predicted this week that Mr. Trump would cut red tape this year on a significant scale. The group said that under Mr. Obama, typically 97,000 pages were printed annually in the Federal Register, a level that is likely to be cut by a third under Mr. Trump.

Regulatory analyst Clyde Wayne Crews at CEI said this week that regulatory compliance costs about $2 trillion annually and that some regulations he calls regulatory dark matter are imposed without adequate public review.

Federal requirements of publishing a notice of proposed rule-making and allowing public comment do not apply to interpretative rules, general statements of policy, or rules of agency organization, procedure or practice, Mr. Crews said in a blog post. Further, most regulations costs and benefits are unknown. Regulatory dark matter such as agency and presidential memoranda, guidance documents, notices, bulletins, directives, news releases, letters and even blog posts may enact or influence policy while flouting the [federal] public notice and comment requirements for legislative rules.

Mr. Mulvaney said cutting red tape is urgently needed to make economic growth of 3 percent sustainable.

Our fear is that if we dont get back there quickly, there will be people who never know what 3 percent means, he said. And I dont think it should come as a surprise that there are some people who dont want you to remember what 3 percent growth would be like because it would be a tremendous sort of damnation of what happened in the previous administration.

Read more:
Trump axes 860 Obama regulations, 179 from 'secret' list - Washington Times

On Friday, just after President Trump offered Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci the position of White House communications director, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer resigned in protest. Spicer apparently ardently disagreed with Scaramucci's hiring and believed he could not do the job, NBC News' Katy Tur reports.

But perhaps it is more surprising Scaramucci wanted the job in the first place, given the way he talked about then-candidate Trump in an August 2015 appearance on Fox Business. "He's a hack politician," Scaramucci declared. "I'll tell you who he's gonna be president of, you can tell Donald I said this: the Queens County Bullies Association."

Scaramucci further hammered Trump on his outer borough roots. "You're an inherited money dude from Queens County," Scaramucci said, seizing on the president's notorious insecurity about fitting in with the Manhattan elite when he was a real estate mogul. Scaramucci also knocked Trump for "the way he talks about women" and for his "big mouth."

Now, Scaramucci will be in charge of massaging the messaging that comes from that "big mouth." Watch his appearance below. Kimberly Alters

Read more:
Trump's new communications director donated $2300 to Obama in 2008 - The Week Magazine

The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it had dropped a requirement that Harley-Davidson spend $3 million to fight air pollution as part of a settlement reached with the Obama administration.

The Milwaukee-based company will remain responsible for $12 million in fines for selling illegal Screamin' Eagle motorcycle tuners. But it will no longer be compelled to pay $3 million to an American Lung Association project promoting cleaner-burning cook stoves, according to the notice from the Justice Department.

Certain new developments led the United States and the defendant to agree to revise the consent decree in this manner, the announcement said. The original consent decree would have required defendants to pay a non-governmental third-party organization to carry out the mitigation project. Questions exist as to whether this mitigation project is consistent with the new policy.

It was the first time the Justice Department had put into place a Trump administration policy overturning Obama-era penalties intended to offer redress such as funding an antipollution initiative.

The settlement agreement withHarley-Davidson dates from August 2016and involves the manufacture and sale of around 340,000 illegalmotorcycle tuners.

The devices generate a higher amount of air pollutants. In addition, the company had alsoproduced andcommercialized over12,000 motorcycles without certification from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Under the agreement with the EPA, Harley-Davidson agreed to halt the selling of the engine super tuners, buy them back and destroy them, as well as cover a penalty for violating air pollution laws and sell only models of these devices that are certified to meet Clean Air Act emissions standards, a statement from the EPAsaid at the time.

Obama administration officials said it was a landmark enforcement action.

Given Harley-Davidsons prominence in the industry, this is a very significant step toward our goal of stopping the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices that cause harmful pollution on our roads and in our communities, Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden, head of the Justice Departments Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement in August 2016.

Anyone else who manufactures, sells, or installs these types of illegal products should take heed of Harley-Davidsons corrective actions and immediately stop violating the law.

Harley-Davidson also agreed to pay an additional $3 million to the American Lung Association for a project to replace conventional wood stoves with cleaner-burning stoves in northeastern communities.

Thursdays decision reverses an Obama administration practice of having banks and companies donate money to outside groups as part of settlement agreements with the federal government.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the policy last month.

When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people not to bankroll third-party special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power, Sessions said in a statement.

But Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and former director of the EPAs Office of Civil Enforcement, said such third-party payments were justified.

Once these companies are caught, you cant turn the clock back to undo the damage theyve done to public health or the environment, so getting part of the settlement to support actions to reduce that damage going forward helps to make the environment whole, which isnt accomplished just by paying penalties or returning to compliance, he said in an interview.

The American Lung Association said it was not informed in advance of the decision and would be forced to drop the program.

The Justice Department and Harley-Davidson declined further comment.

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Trump DOJ gives Harley-Davidson $3 million discount on Obama-era pollution fine - Washington Post

Rarely has a president taken office so focused on undoing his predecessors works as Donald Trump. Six months in, he has little to show.

Monday brought twin blows. Not only did the Affordable Care Act survive another Republican repeal effort, maintaining President Obamas signature domestic achievement, but Trump was forced to certify that Iran continues to comply with the nuclear deal that was the biggest foreign policy accomplishment of Obamas second term.

Beyond those two headlines, Obamas program to shield some 750,000 so-called Dreamers from deportation continues intact, much to the frustration of some of Trumps most ardent backers. The tax hikes on upper-income earners which were among the hardest-won battles of Obamas first term remain in effect. U.S. relations with Cuba remain open, following Obamas normalization policy, despite Trumps public show last month of tightening some travel and trade restrictions. And the sharp increases in U.S. use of solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy, largely at the expense of coal, continues, Trumps rhetoric notwithstanding.

None of that means Trump has failed. Halfway through his first year, Trump has achieved some of his goals, although his repeated boast that he has signed more bills and Im talking about through the legislature than any president, ever, is untrue no matter how one counts.

His announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord in 2020 has been the best known part of a concerted administration effort to roll back Obama-era environmental initiatives.

And even before his election, Trumps campaign against trade agreements roused opposition that helped kill Obamas proposed 12-nation Pacific trade pact and slow the expansion of global trade deals. Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the by-then-moribund Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first workday after his inauguration.

But Trumps unusual concentration on repealing what his predecessor did, rather than putting forward initiatives of his own, has also hampered his effectiveness to a remarkable degree.

One of the truisms of American government as Trump is now learning to his dismay is that taking away a benefit is generally harder than starting something new.

Thats one reason why presidents typically prefer to push their own agendas, rather than focus to the extent Trump has on uprooting their predecessors actions.

Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon did not, for example, undo the New Deal or Great Society programs of, respectively, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. President Reagan moved quickly to repeal the Jimmy Carter administrations regulations on oil and natural gas production. But his administrations chief focus was on its own plans for tax cuts and a military buildup.

President Clinton devoted his first couple of years in office to winning a tax increase on high-income Americans, a healthcare plan which failed, the North American Free Trade Agreement (another Trump target, as it happens) and two major gun control measures. George W. Bushs first year seemed set to be built around tax cuts and his No Child Left Behind school reform plan until the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks redefined his presidency. Obamas opening year centered on efforts to recover from an economic crisis, re-regulate Wall Street and, of course, pass what became the Affordable Care Act.

Trumps campaign did feature elements of what could form the basis of a distinctive first-year agenda. He talked about a massive plan to rebuild the nations roads, bridges and airports. He called for wholesale renegotiation of trade agreements. He advocated a sharp reduction in the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country. He endorsed a multibillion-dollar plan to give tax money to families to pay tuition for private or religious schools. And he touted a complete rewrite of the tax code, along with deep tax cuts.

He has not delivered concrete proposals on any of those ideas.

In part, that failure to follow through on those ideas stems from the reality that each of them, with the possible exception of tax reform, deeply divides the GOP. Some of Trumps proposals, such as those on trade, divide his own administration. Whether Trumps ideas on taxes fit those of his party remains unknown because -- as with health insurance he has never specified what he has in mind.

Compounding the problem of a divided party is Trumps clear lack of interest in developing policy and his slowness in choosing people for top government jobs. Together, those deficits have left his administration hamstrung in efforts to define an agenda of its own. By default, thats left Trump with the agenda the Republicans developed during the Obama years one built around opposition to the party then in the White House.

The administrations weakness on policy advocacy has been glaring over the last week as the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare dangled in the Senate. Trump made no concerted effort to win over public opinion no extended speeches laying out a case for the Republican bill, no news conference to answer questions about his position.

On his preferred method of communication, Twitter, Trump sent more than 60 messages in the week leading up to the collapse of the GOP Obamacare repeal effort Monday night. Only six concerned healthcare fewer than his tweets about the Womens Open golf tournament that was held at the country club he owns in New Jersey. None of the tweets defended the plans controversial elements; instead they simply demanded that senators act.

Read more from the original source:
Trump set out to uproot Obama's legacy. So far, that's failed ...