Everyone wants the voracious, feral regulatory state defanged, declawed, drugged into a stupor, and chained in a cage, if not killed outright. This essay will walk readers through the process, along with making some recommendations for short- and long-term fixes.
One way to dismantle the administrative state is via litigation (as was the case with getting the EPA to stop regulating private ponds, which finally happened via Sackett v. EPA). However, dismantling the Administrative State via suing the federal government regulation by regulation is not within the realm of possibility. That’s because the Administrative State, like onions and parfaits, has layers: laws, rules, regulations, policies, and procedures.
(NOTE: “Rules” is the general catch-all word folks use for any and all of these layers, but when I use the term, I mean federal court rulings.)
Congress passes laws that the president then signs. Rarely are they passed over a presidential veto. The laws mostly tell federal agencies what they are supposed to accomplish. They are collected in the U.S. Code (USC), numbered and titled according to topic. (When looking for laws, I find Cornell University Law School’s website to be more user-friendly and include many great background notes.)
Federal Register. They generally provide for a public comment period.
When regulations are finalized, they are again published in the Federal Register. To understand the scope of this regulatory system, the January 21, 2025, edition is 872 pages long and contains 84 notices, 23 proposed rules, 15 rules, and two significant documents.
The finalized regulations are collected in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Like laws, regulations are organized in numbered titles according to topic. Irritatingly, USC chapter numbers and titles do not correspond with CFR chapter numbers and titles. Cornell also offers a more easily readable CFR website.
Policies are overarching themes and priorities that each administration establishes. They guide senior members of administrations as they manage their agencies. Basically, resources, including time, are limited. No matter the laws on the books, what gets the focus and effort of federal agency staff depends on the administration’s policies.
Procedures are mostly how daily activities get done and cover just about every aspect of every hour of every federal employee’s day at the office. Every agency does things in its own way.
Here are a few examples of procedures: How fish counts are recorded. How time and attendance sheets are completed. How employees can apply for training. How nuclear materials are transported. How federal beach lands are maintained. How visa applications are issued or denied. One of the gems from Trump’s first administration was the start of streamlining IT policies and procedures for the federal government.
Most of my federal career was spent in management. Given that 40-some agencies/offices are engaged in operations overseas, I had the opportunity to work for and with several agencies, and I had lots of bosses.
One task at every new place, or with every change to a new boss, was introducing my supervisor to the real powers that dictated my activities. Besides laws, rules, regulations, policies, and procedures, the real powers included headquarters-based staff overseeing their implementation. Knowing all this information diverted the bosses’ frustration from me when I could not jump at every command.
The current federal regulatory environment allows agencies not only to write procedures for and enforce the laws and rules but also to act as judges, juries, and executioners of people who do not do as they are told. This far exceeds any power granted to any branch of the government under the Constitution.
So, can’t we simply obliterate the CFR? Can we just have Congress pass a law that federal regulations will be no more and that Congress will make the laws that apply to the American people? Sorry, it’s not that simple.
At this point, it does not matter how we got here, with activist judges, agenda-driven bureaucrats, and lazy Congresses all playing their parts. We the People require our elected representatives to do their jobs, and make sure that “burden” is no longer the noun of choice for “regulatory.”
Congress can pass new laws and amend old ones. Federal courts can reverse egregious rulings like the Chevron doctrine. Administrations can change policies. Agencies can walk back regulations and update procedures. Lately we are seeing Presidents make immediate changes through the Executive Order process they control. A comprehensive overhaul requires coordination rather than chaos.
To clean up this enormous mess will require real, coherent teamwork among agency and congressional staff, their legal departments, and the delightfully named Department of Government Efficiency. I suggest some members of the public be added to each team; namely, old, cynical federal managers who know where all the bodies were buried and all the cash spent.
The CFR needs to be reviewed and compared to the USC to determine what needs to be enacted into law, which laws and regulations need to be discarded, and what directives must be subsumed into agencies’ procedure manuals and not imposed on the public. Immediately, any imposition of penalties on Americans and their activities needs to fall within law and not regulations.
One question that desperately needs to be addressed is what we should do about administrative courts contained in the CFR. Two options are to make them part of the federal judiciary or pass laws establishing a separate means of addressing certain issues.
This review must be with an eye to shrinking significantly the activities and cost of government while freeing America, its people, and its enterprises to be as great as they all can be. Only as legal requirements for spending are reduced or eliminated will we get to the smaller, less costly government We the People elected President Trump to establish.
When the reviewers are done, Congress will need to kick into high gear, implementing appropriate laws to properly allocate national issues to the federal bureaucracy and release all other issues that should be in the hands of the states back to them.
There is one tool in the federal arsenal, though, that can help ease the burden on the American public. The appropriation bill for the fiscal year dictates and limits agencies’ priorities, resources, staffing, and activities for a 12-month period.
Moving forward, Trump’s administration can have an immediate impact on runaway regulation. The first thing those working to finalize the FY-2025 budget over the next few weeks can do is slash spending for every agency for the remainder of the year. This will limit agencies’ ability to continue their draconian oppression of We the People via their nitpicking of the minutia of our lives.
The CFR review should be well underway in a few months when agencies and Congress begin working on the FY-2026 budgets. The contraction of the federal administrative state by eliminating the bulk of its regulatory activity can continue apace, with even more reduction in federal spending.
We the People would appreciate having this accomplished before the mid-terms. That’s when we will express either our gratitude for or frustration with this Congressional process in the voting booth.
Anony Mee is the nom de blog of a retired public servant who X-tweets at oh_yeahMee.
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