The 2019 Unified Agenda

For most of time, mere mortals had no idea what was the Unified Agenda. Only the aficionados of regulatory policy knew of its existence and importance, and that it was officially known as the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Along came the Obama era in which the annual listing of planned rules became a symbol of the cost of an extraordinary government expansion. Indeed, it became such a symbol that by the end of his administration, the release of the Unified Agenda became an annual exercise in hide-the-ball to minimize the bad publicity. The Trump Administration has switched the emphasis from “regulatory” to “deregulatory” actions. As AAF’s Dan Goldbeck nicely analyzes, the edition of the Unified Agenda released this past Wednesday contains data on those rule-makings that are deemed as “deregulatory” for the fourth consecutive time. His summary is that “the number of regulatory proposals in the pipeline has increased by more than 100 [to 550ish] since Fall 2017, and the number of those finalized in a given period has nearly doubled [to nearly 110].” What happens next? Recently AAF examined progress to date in the regulatory budgeting process under Executive Order 13,771. Goldbeck uses the Unified Agenda to update the progress. Through the middle of May, there had been 20 regulatory actions (with a cost of $16.7 billion), and 48 deregulatory actions (saving $9.3 billion); the net regulatory cost thus far in fiscal 2019 stands at $7.4 billion. Through the remainder of the year, however, the plan is 13 more regulatory actions costing $7.8 billion, but 16 deregulatory actions saving $53.7 billion. If the administration hits these targets, the result will be a net regulatory cost reduction of $38.5 billion in fiscal 2019. Budgeting (and reducing) regulatory costs remains the most successful and least-recognized of the Trump Administration’s economic policies.