Trump Set to Combat ‘Regulatory Dark Matter’ Like Obama Transgender Bathroom ‘Guidance’ By Tyler O’Neil
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/07/19/trump-set-to-combat-regulatory-dark-matter-like-obama-transgender-bathroom-guidance/
On Thursday, the Trump administration’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) will release its semi-annual “Unified Agenda,” a master plan for all significant federal regulation which agencies intend to issue in the coming months. According to one conservative leader, this agenda will provide a blueprint for how the administration will cut down on all kinds of regulation — not just official rules, but also “regulatory dark matter.”
“If you go outside and look at the stars tonight, you’re not seeing much of the universe. The bulk of it is dark matter,” explained Clyde Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), on a call with reporters. Similarly, while Congress passes a few laws and administrative agencies issue a few official regulations, “there are thousands and thousands of other notices,” bulletins, letters, and so on, issued by agencies every year.
This “regulatory dark matter” is hard to track, because it isn’t even collected or examined. Rather, an agency will set forth specific dictates and companies, organizations, or individuals will follow them, without the intermediate step of an official law or regulation.
The best example of this came last May, when the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a letter to North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory insisting that House Bill 2, the state’s law restricting public, multiple-stall restrooms on the basis of biological sex, violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by institutionalizing sex discrimination.
In one sweeping move, the DOJ had redefined the Civil Rights Act of 1964, extending its protection against discrimination on the basis of sex to transgender people, something foreign to the law itself and with which the law’s authors clearly would have disagreed.
This letter was not an official law passed by Congress and signed by the president. Nor was it an official regulation, submitted in the Federal Register. No, it was an administrative fiat which threatened hefty penalties — the revocation of North Carolina’s $4.5 billion in federal funding for the 2016-2017 school year.
But this infamous transgender mandate — reversed by a Trump administration directive this past February — is just the tip of the iceberg, Crews said.
“It’s long been the case that there are more regulations than laws, and if we’re missing regulations, we’re missing government’s biggest effect on the economy,” the CEI vice president argued. He expanded the astral metaphor adding, “Lately, Washington has gone supernova.” CONTINUE AT SITE
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