Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin speaks on Day One of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis., July 15, 2024. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
DOGE is a promising new initiative at the federal level, but governors and state legislatures also have the chance to make significant headway.
As President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet takes shape, it will be interesting to see what changes the incoming administration prioritizes.
One of Trump’s most promising new initiatives is the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been picked to lead the new commission, and neither has been shy about discussing some of DOGE’s goals. It is quite clear that the federal government has a spending problem and that regulations are out of control.
While the previous Trump administration made headway in slowing the growth rate of federal regulations to a level not seen in at least 50 years, it was not successful in achieving a net reduction in regulations. Perhaps with the DOGE in place, Trump will be more successful in reducing the regulatory state.
It will be interesting to see what emerges in Washington, D.C., but I’ll be even more interested in what comes out of the states in 2025. Republicans continue to hold an advantage in governorships and state legislatures: In 27 states there is a GOP majority in the state legislature and/or a Republican governor.
Holding true to traditional conservative principles of limiting government and allowing markets to work, Republicans should make regulatory reform a top priority this year. Red states generally have fewer regulations than blue states, and this can be taken further.
And incoming legislators and governors do not have to start from scratch. If a state already has a good strategy in place, there is no shame in duplicating efforts and borrowing from another state’s playbook.
Virginia could be a good place to start. Three years ago, Governor Glenn Youngkin established the Office of Regulatory Management via an executive order to provide a framework for cutting back regulations in the Old Dominion State. All proposed new regulations in the state are subject to thorough cost–benefit analysis.
Regulations typically have staying power and are tough to eliminate once vested interests obtain rents and benefit from the status quo. Subjecting new regulations to cost–benefit analysis changes the mindset of state agencies (or those overseeing them) and forces them to think more like economists. In other words, does the benefit of the proposed regulation exceed the costs?
The office provides direct oversight of the commonwealth’s administrative state and sets clear targets for scaling back regulations — in Virginia’s case, the set target was a 25 percent reduction in regulatory requirements. The office also sets clear standards for what cutting back regulations actually means. Thus it provides that scaling back the burden imposed by a regulation, such as by reducing licensing requirements for cosmetologists, fulfills the mandate to cut back regulations.
So far, this program has been working well. In a recent speech, Governor Youngkin noted that the state has eliminated 8,000 regulatory requirements, saving Virginia citizens $372 million.
A second state that could serve as an example is Idaho. Governor Brad Little allowed all of Idaho’s regulations to sunset in 2019 and implemented zero-based regulatory reform. Flipping the typical question from “should this regulation be cut” to “do we really need this regulation” is a powerful shift.
By one national metric, Idaho is now the least-regulated state in the nation. In 2018, Idaho had more than 8,500 pages in its Administrative Code. Today that number is under 6,000, and subsequent reviews are likely to result in further reductions.
Does scaling back regulation make citizens of Idaho and Virginia less safe? There is no evidence to suggest that this is the case, and the power of example shouldn’t be underestimated, at least in those states that are open to deregulatory initiatives.
As mentioned above, simple cost–benefit analysis is a good (and too often overlooked) way of scoring a possible regulation. To take a specific example, parents want access to high-quality child care, but make the regulatory requirements too demanding and the result will be higher prices and long waiting lines.
Part of the problem may be that regulators don’t know how their state stacks up on child-care regulations. The new Childcare Regulation Index published by the Knee Regulatory Research Center helps fill in this gap.
Interestingly, Virginia and Idaho both score very well in the index, ranking tenth and second respectively. Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts are the most restrictive, a reminder that in some states the road to deregulatory reform will be a long one.
This article was originally published in National Review.
