DOGE Guts the Regulatory State
The DOGE super bots are coming for the Federal regulations.
The could wipe out *100,000 useless -- *and illegal -- mandates *shackling our fair republic.
*Will we be able to open lemonade stands without on-site OSHA coordinators.
The Washington swamp was very relieved when Elon Musk went back to catching rockets with chopsticks.
While Congress -- famously -- took Elon's trillions in federal savings and squeezed them into a travel-size 9.1 billion in cuts -- Republicans promise more, as they often do.
But one big legacy of DOGE had nothing to do with spending.
Instead, it targeted the regulatory leviathan the deep state has weaved into a straitjacket on the American economy made of hundreds of thousands of bureaucratic rules and mandates.
In case you wonder why every manufacturer in America needs a lawyer just to understand what's legal.
Costs of Regulation
The National Association of Manufacturers estimates red tape adds $25,000 per worker in costs. For small manufacturers, it's $50,000.
As in regulations cost more than salaries.
EPA permits alone can add decades to infrastructure or factories -- to the point companies just walk away.
Meanwhile, you may recall Biden trying to outlaw pizza ovens, and succeeding in redefining puddles as waterways to wipe out family farms.
Drive through a small town in America and what used to be mom n pop restaurants, general stores with milkshake counters, and charming Bed and Breakfasts is now a gas station and a Burger King.
Behind those are ruins that used to be factories.
Then there's the inflation. The National Association of Home Builders estimates regulations add $94,000 to the cost of a new house. And that regulations nearly double rents between restrictive zoning, green codes, and environmental and ADA mandates.
Regulations drive up meat costs by a third. Milk by a fifth. They tack hundreds of dollars on new appliances.
In healthcare, regulations give us thousand dollar band aids and million dollar transplants, all lovingly crafted by well-paid regulators and the lobbyists who buy them golden parachutes.
Enter the DOGE bots
So what DOGE did is build an AI tool that analyzed over 200,000 federal regulations to determine which ones are not in fact legal. As in the law either expired or they never were legal.
They found that roughly half were illegal -- 100,000 rules. Which they estimate cost us $3.3 trillion per year (!)
That’s more than the income tax. In fact, it's almost the GDP of Japan.
Now, if you're new to government -- or you're a Democrat -- you might find it surprising that half of federal regulations are illegal.
In fact, it's even worse: DOGE found just 38% of federal regulations are legal, but another 12% aren't exactly legal but they're "needed by the agencies."
Raising the question perhaps agencies should stop doing illegal things with illegal rules.
So once the super bot finds an inappropriate regulation, it rewrites the rule, hands it to a human for review and, if approved, it goes to Trump's sharpie for repeal.
So far the bot's rewritten over a thousand rules at HUD -- which took just 2 weeks in the first test-case.
Now it's digging in to the other 99,000 rules.
What’s Next
Tax and spend gets the headlines, but regulation is arguably even more important for growth.
One Mercatus study estimated that if regulations had simply been *frozen at Reagan levels family income would be $30,000 higher — almost 50%.
We can only imagine if we'd gotten rid of 100,000 illegal rules in 1980 -- maybe six figure incomes would be normal.
During his first term Trump removed 5 rules for every new one. During the campaign he said he'd get that to 10. The DOGE super bot could take that to a thousand.
And it could create millions of jobs -- and trillions in wages -- for the American people.
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You've got two hopes of that happening. Bob Hope and no hope.
The military industrial complex will kill us all before they cut 1 cent from their budget.
That is their modus operandi.
The Chevron deference needs to be applied to every damn illegal law both parties have forced on us over the years and all state governors need to repledge to the federal system.
Laws are made by Congress, not pen pushers on easy street.
If California and New York prefer a Confederacy they need to own up to the fact.