Trump’s ‘Fake Facts’ About Regulation Could Lead to Real Catastrophes
Jan. 23, 2017
Trump’s ‘Fake Facts’ About Regulation Could Lead to Real Catastrophes
Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen
Freezing new regulations across the board is bad enough. But there is no way for President Donald Trump to slash regulations by 75 percent without cutting into bedrock public protections that hold Wall Street accountable, keep our water and children safe from lead poisoning, and contain food contamination outbreaks – to name just a few of the disastrous consequences of the proposal he discussed today.
Trump’s unpopular deregulation agenda will permit corporations to rip off consumers, poison our environment, cheat and mistreat workers, and more. It also will make the country far less economically secure, as the deregulation-caused 2008 financial crisis demonstrated.
The Trump administration is peddling the myth that regulations cost the economy trillions of dollars a year. These costs exist only in the imaginations of corporate lobbyists and have been rejected by every independent authority that has looked at them. More importantly, the official government figures from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) show that benefits of new regulations vastly outweigh the costs every year the OMB has produced the report, including under Republican administrations.
President Trump must reject false claims of regulatory costs concocted by big business lobbyists that conflict with government estimates.
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