Last week, President Trump signed issued an Executive Order requiring agencies to repeal at least two regs for every new reg and also capping the total compliance costs of any regulation issued in a given year.
The Administration has also issued interim guidance on the issue. The guidance clarifies that the two-for-one rule applies only to “significant” regulations, which in existing law is defined as any that that imposes an annual economic cost of $100 million or more. According to the guidance, agencies that plan to issue a “significant regulatory action” on or before Sep. 30, 2017 must first identify two existing regulatory actions the agency plans to eliminate or propose for elimination before the new regulation is issued. The agency must also “fully offset total incremental cost” of the new regulation “as of September 30, 2017.”
How will this become a reality? It is not yet clear, but the Office of Federal Relations will continue to monitor the progress.
For an overview, the Federal Register has an overview of the federal regulatory process here.