The Trump administration, in a frenzy to kill Obama-era regulations and beyond, more than doubled its savings goal and is on a pace to make record cuts to rules the president claims are jobs killers.

A new report on the year in regulation slashing from American Action Forum said that the administration achieved $1.65 billion in regulatory savings, miles above its goal of $687 million.

And the administration is just starting on helping President Trump make good a campaign promise to kill regulations and brake the issuance of new ones, said the report.





“Considering there is already more than half a trillion in proposed rule savings to date this year, some of the administration’s most significant measures may be a major part of agencies’ FY 2019 budgets,” said the report from AAF regulatory experts Dan Bosch and Dan Goldbeck.

What’s more, the administration has started to shift from nixing Obama rules to digging deeper to cut others.

“The Trump administration easily surpassed its annualized savings goal, with savings more than double the target. By and large, the agencies covered by Executive Order 13,771 adhered closely to its principles, reversing a long trend of escalating regulatory costs. Encouragingly, the administration’s regulatory savings have shifted from delays and withdrawals of Obama-era rules to substantive deregulatory changes,” said their report provided in advance to Secrets.

The administration's war on regulations, policed by the Office of Management and Budget, has been followed by every agency though nine did not register savings and will be required to develop a plan to do so.



Leading the way, said Bosch and Goldbeck, were Health and Human Services, Interior, Labor, Justice and Transportation. Their regulation slashing accounted for $1.4 billion in annualized savings.

One, Homeland Security, actually imposed more costs by increasing the number of H-2B visas. The added cost was some $10.3 million in annualized costs due to the paperwork costs to businesses eager to hire 15,000 new foreign workers.

The report cited the key five ways the savings were made.



Regulatory changes (modifications in how the regulation functions).

Delays (such as extending compliance deadlines).

Legislative action that mandated specific regulatory changes.

Paperwork (including information collection requests, applications, and reporting).