How Is Trump's Deregulatory Push Going?

Welcome back to Human Capital! I’m Melanie Waddell in Washington. With Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate behind us, Michael Bloomberg’s less than stellar first-time showing — according to comments by voters and political pundits on both sides of the aisle — may dash his chances of winning the White House and reviving the now-defunct Labor Department fiduciary rule (as he announced Tuesday that he would do if elected).

Also front and center, however, is an overlooked aspect of President Donald Trump’s recently released 2021 budget, which says his administration is on a deregulatory tear.

Keep scrolling to read why Trump’s regulatory relief numbers shouldn’t be taken “at face value,” according to Heidi Shierholz, director of policy and an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, and why Labor needs to act fast if it wants to wrap up a fiduciary rule reboot proposal this year.

Don’t forget to listen in on the latest Human Capital podcast with George Michael Gerstein, co-chair of the Fiduciary Governance Group at Stradley Ronon in Washington.

Trump’s 2021 budget points to his previous promise to “cut two regulations for every new” one, and says that “was the wrong goal.”

Instead: The federal government during the last three years has cut more than seven regulations for every significant new regulation, Trump reported, and “put the brakes on an endless assault of new, costly actions by federal agencies.”