Do you approve of the less-than-surgical presidential directives to reduce government advisory committees, and other, similar orders?
Necessary background:
The federal advisory committee system was formed in the 1970s to provide structure and greater transparency around the government’s job of seeking expert advice. There are around 1,000 advisory committees reporting to more than 50 government agencies, and there are firm guidelines around ensuring public access to all proceedings, administered through the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Advisory committees provide expertise on nearly every issue imaginable—such as counseling the Department of Homeland Security on chemicals and data privacy or advising the Transportation Department on drones and motorcycle safety.
Ok, here’s the question:
Just recently, President Trump signed an executive order directing each agency to ‘terminate at least one-third of its current’ advisory committees by the end of September.
In January 2017, the president signed an Executive Order requiring agencies to slash two regulations for every new regulation put into place.
Allowing that many, or perhaps all, of the advisory committees are wastefully large, do you think it’s a good idea to order a ⅓ reduction across the board? Will it be better in the long run, than having a formal review of all the committees to identify waste, and form a considered plan?
Similarly, do you really think so many federal regulations are so completely pointless and/or detrimental? And allowing for that, is it really a good idea to have such an un-nuanced goal? Would it not be better to have regulations reviewed, corrected, updated, etc.?
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8 Answers
Well, apparently the regulations have donny scared of something.
Yes. Of course they should be reviewed, tightened and updated, especially with THIS administration at the helm.
It just shows his stupidity and superficiality.
Imagine if a family with a tight budget was told to slash their expenditures to ⅔rds.
Now you have one of your kids starving to death, someone freezes to death during winter, and everyone starts to smell, because you only have one shower a month.
But hey, at least you saved money!
I think the advisory committees were another example of bloated government. I suspect many were duplicating the work of others. My take on it is: if we miss them, we can reinstate them. If we don’t miss them, they were useless to start with.
What is trump’s justification for this action? Rationale in his own words? That would help people decide whether they approve or not.
Leave it to a dummy who needs all the advice he can possibly get to start firing the experts. The fool has appointed hacks and dildos to head Federal departments and expects people like Betsy DeVos and Rick Perry to know an expert from a fig newton!!
They’re ALL spectacularly inept. But worse than his appointments if you can believe it are his gaping vacancies in upper echelon government offices, as even THIS jackass can’t find enough other obtuse morons to defile civic government. I read yesterday that so far 44 high level Trump administrators and White House bigwigs have been indicted, fired in disgrace, resigned in disgust or embarrassment in the most scandalously corrupt administration in the history of the country.
There’s nothing strange or obscure about doing this. It’s done in business all the time. It doesn’t make sense to create a bureaucracy to decide which bureaucrats to eliminate. Let those advisors decide themselves which should go. It doesn’t need another study, another advisory committee, or another bureaucracy to study it. Businesses operate this way and occasionally make mistakes but it gets the job done and it doesn’t take a lifetime to do so.
The same is true for the regulations. The sheer volume of regulations insures that we can’t comply. Many contradict each other. When a new regulation is created, there should be no problem in letting the regulators which regulations are superceded. Since this has not been done for many years a 2 for 1 seems reasonable. Reduce the volume, reduce the complexity, and give us a chance to comply.
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