According to Donald Trump, fully 70 percent of all federal regulations are completely unnecessary and he would eliminate them in his first days in office if elected president.
At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire Thursday, Trump proudly proclaimed:
“We are cutting the regulation at a tremendous clip. I would say 70 percent of regulations can go. It’s just stopping businesses from growing.”
What makes Trump’s announcement even more bizarre is that earlier in the day Trump campaign adviser Anthony Scaramucci said only 10 percent of federal regulations needed to be done away with. Apparently he forgot to inform the Orange Menace of that much lower figure. Specifically, Scaramucci told Reuters:
“We need regulation but immediately every agency will be asked to rate the importance of their regulations and we will push to remove 10 percent of the least important.”
Scaramucci, a Wall Street financier, also said that regulations on the financial industry are harmful:
Wall Street is not the devil,” said Scaramucci. “In fact we are at our best when (there) is harmony between Main Street and Wall Street and we hope to restore that.”
Considering that Wall Street’s risky actions very nearly plunged the American economy into another depression, it seems highly unlikely that most voters are eager to let the financial world go unrestrained by any regulations.
Scaramucci added that regulation reform would be a priority for Trump in the following areas:
- Labor Department rules expanding the fiduciary standard for financial brokers who sell retirement products would likely be eliminated.
- The Dodd-Frank banking reforms that became law after the Great Recession of 2008-09 will be reviewed and “the worst anti-business parts of it will be gutted.”
- The Volcker rule would be adjusted. The rule was implemented to reduce risk-taking by preventing banks from using their own capital to make speculative bets.
Translation: All of the banking regulations on the books would be done away with and once more the wolves would be in charge of the chicken coops. Yeah, because that worked so damn well the last time.
Featured Image Via The Daily Mail
