Report on Trump budget focuses on regulatory spending

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While President Donald Trump has pledged an all-out effort to do away with wasteful regulations, his proposed 2018 budget would increase federal spending on regulatory agencies by 3.5 percent, according to a new report issued July 18, 2017 by the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis and the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University.
“President Trump’s proposed budget calls for more staff and resources for agencies responsible for immigration and border protection, while reducing staff and resources at other agencies, particularly those focused on the environment,” concluded the authors, whose annual reports track shifts in regulatory spending across nearly six decades.
The current budget analysis, conducted by Melinda Warren of the Weidenbaum Center and Susan Dudley of the  Regulatory Studies Center, reveals that the president’s requested 3.4-percent increase in expenditures for federal regulatory departments and agencies is two times the increase President Obama got for those same regulators in 2017.


Highlights:
Although President Trump has made reducing regulatory burdens a priority, he proposes to increase the regulators’ budget in FY 2018.
The proposed 2018 regulators’ budget reflects a 3.4% real increase in expenditures.
The proposed increase is twice the 1.7% increase estimated in 2017.
Proposed outlays are $69.4B for 2018 compared to $65.9B in 2017 and $63.7B in 2016.
Proposed staffing levels would decline by 0.5%—from 281,300 full-time personnel in 2017 to 279,992 in 2018. In 2017, regulatory agency staffing increased 1.5%.
Some agencies are budgeted for significant increases in both expenditures and staff, while others face dramatic cuts.
Agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) focused on immigration are the big budgetary winners, including:
Coast Guard,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
Customs and Border Control, and
Transportation Security Administration.

Overall, DHS regulatory agencies would increase expenditures by 13.7% (an additional $4.1B) in 2018, after a 5.9% increase ($1.7B) in 2017.
DHS staffing is also budgeted to grow by 2.3% (3,294 additional people) in 2018 following a 1.3% increase (1,896 people) in 2017.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is targeted for sharp reductions in ...

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