The federal regulatory state is out of control and the American economy is suffering as a result. Every year, the flurry of rules and regulations emanating from the web of administrative agencies, departments, and bureaus cost the American people between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. Regulations not only inflate the price of goods and services, squeezing the household budgets of middle-class Americans, but they also drive up the cost of doing business, so that only the biggest firms and their armies of lawyers, accountants, and compliance officers can thrive.

But help is on the way. On Monday, January 30, President Trump signed an executive order, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs,” that will finally impose some commonsense discipline on the rule-writing agencies of the Executive Branch. The first part of the executive order proposes an elegant solution to a complicated problem. Call it the “one in, two out” rule: for every new regulation that an executive agency issues, at least two old regulations must be identified for elimination. Given that many decades-old laws are still spawning new regulations today, there will be no shortage of outdated rules that are ripe for repeal.

The second part of President Trump’s executive order creates an annual regulatory budgeting process that will require executive agencies to keep the compliance costs of their regulations below a predetermined limit. This is similar to a bill that I introduced last year as part of the Article I Project that would, for the first time, require Congress to vote on the total regulatory burden each federal agency may impose on the American people each year – a budget for federal regulatory costs to mirror Congress’s annual budget for taxes and spending. Whereas the president’s executive order puts the director of the Office of Management and Budget in charge of the regulatory budget, our bill, The Article I Regulatory Budget Act, makes Congress directly responsible for the size and scope of the regulatory state.

Executive agencies could still issue and enforce their rules, but only so long as their impact fits within the regulatory-cost limits established by Congress. This would give regulatory agencies – really for the first time – an incentive to make their regulations cost-effective. Regulators would be made to work for the American people instead of the other way around. And the American people, for their part, would be empowered to make informed judgments at the ballot box about economic regulations.

Ultimately, the only way to put the American people back in charge of Washington is to put the Legislative Branch back in charge of federal policymaking. But President Trump’s executive order is an important first step in this process, and one that I proudly support.

Barack Obama’s presidency was unprecedented in many ways, but the most distinctive – and damaging – feature of his tenure in the White House was his casual disregard for the constitutional limits on the office of the president. By the end of two terms in office, Former-President Obama had grown perfectly comfortable boasting about violating the boundaries on the Executive Branch in order to enact policies that had been rejected by Congress.

From education (forcing Common Core on states through No Child Left Behind waivers), to immigration (granting de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants through DACA and DAPA), our 44th president took unilateral lawmaking to never seen before heights.

But as damaging as all of these executive actions were, the real scandal is the vast lawmaking powers that the Executive Branch wields today by law. For decades Congress has largely avoided the difficult and politically inconvenient trade-offs inherent in legislating, choosing instead to delegate sweeping regulatory powers to federal bureaucratic agencies.

As a result, unelected bureaucrats—not elected representatives in Congress—end up making the vast majority of the federal laws Americans must obey on a day-to-day basis. In 2016, for instance, Congress passed and the president signed 2,966 pages of new laws, while federal agencies issued 97,110 pages of new regulations—about 32 times as much.

As a new president is sworn in today, many Democrats are coming to regret their acquiescence to the centralization of policymaking authority in the Executive Branch, particularly when it comes to trade policy, an area where the president has been granted immense discretion to unilaterally raise trade barriers.

For example, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 authorizes the president to deal with “large and serious United States balance-of-payments” deficits by imposing temporary import surcharges on any goods, not exceeding 15 percent.

While Section 122 confines the president’s authority to act within 150 days, Section 338(a) of the Tariff Act of 1930 contains no such time restriction. Under Sec. 338(a),the president “when he finds that the public interest will be served shall by proclamation specify and declare new or additional duties... upon articles wholly or in part or product of...any foreign country whenever he shall find as fact such country… discriminates in fact against the commerce of the United States.”

These are just two examples of the vast discretionary authority to raise trade barriers that the Executive Branch will have at its disposal. While some Americans may wish to see higher trade barriers in the United States, there’s reason to believe that such a move would wreak havoc on many small and midsize manufacturers that rely on imports and globally connected supply chains.

That is why Congress must reassert its Art. I Sec. 8 power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations” by passing the Global Trade Accountability Act.

This bill would create a new Sec. 155 in the Trade Act of 1974 that would require congressional approval for any “unilateral trade action” undertaken by the Executive Branch. Before raising any trade barriers, the president would be required to submit a report to Congress outlining the proposed unilateral action, the costs and benefits of the action, and the effective period of the action.

Both chambers of Congress would then have to pass a joint resolution approving the proposed action before it could go into force. The law does allow for a “national emergency” exception, but even that declaration would apply for only 90 days. After that, the aforementioned joint resolution would be required for the policy to continue.
There are still many other areas of federal law in desperate need of congressional accountability. The Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, would set up a similar process for all new federal regulations that impose $100 million or more in compliance costs on the U.S. economy. But this is one step Congress can take now to start making the Executive Branch accountable again.

Our first and perhaps greatest Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, ended his Gettysburg Address by calling on his fellow Americans to rededicate themselves to the “great task” of preserving our “government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people.” I share that commitment, which is why I have always supported term limits for our elected federal officials.

Too often today our representatives and senators seek reelection not by making an argument to their constituents, but by issuing an ultimatum. It usually goes something like this: “I know we’re all citizens in a free republic and that means you can vote for whomever you want, but given the amount of seniority and authority that I’ve built up during my long career in Washington, if you don’t vote for me, our district or state will lose money, power, and influence.”

But this is not a choice – it’s a ploy to increase the power of Washington elites at the expense of everyone else.

Instead of intimidating voters into supporting the candidate with a proven record of maximizing their share of government spoils, Americans should be empowered to choose the candidate they think is best suited to help preserve our government of, by, and for the people.

That is why I have always supported a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on members of Congress, and it’s why I recently co-sponsored Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) plan to limit senators to two six-year terms and representatives to three two-year terms.

I may introduce my own amendment that would equalize the total number of years that members of the two chambers of Congress are allowed to serve (so that senators could serve two six-year terms and representatives could serve six two-year terms), but the final numbers are not as important as the principle: a government of, by, and for the people requires elected representatives who are more interested in securing the common good rather than maximizing their own power and prestige.

I’m often asked whether my support for mandatory term limits means that I will voluntarily impose a term limit on myself. My answer: no, because I don’t want the term-limit movement to suffer the same fate as the Shakers.

Who are the Shakers? They were an 18th century Christian sect that believed in celibacy. Now, celibacy is a fine choice for an individual to make, but it’s not exactly a wise policy for an entire group of people that is interested in self-preservation.

So, when we do succeed, and term limits are finally in the Constitution, I will happily abide by them. But until that time, I will continue the fight to make that possibility a reality.

The U.S. national debt is just a few months away from exceeding $20 trillion – an astronomical sum of such epic proportions that it’s difficult to fathom. Trying to understand the scale of even a fraction of it can boggle the mind. For example, if you were to spend $1 million every day since Jesus was born, you’d still be about $2.5 billion short of spending $1 trillion, and another $19 trillion short of our national debt today. And if contemplating the sheer size of the debt isn’t overwhelming – and terrifying – enough, consider the meteoric speed at which it is increasing: every second of every day, the federal governments spends roughly $27,500 more than it takes in.

How is this possible?

Politicians like to pin the blame on the federal policies and programs that they dislike the most. Those who believe the U.S. military should be leaner and less aggressive abroad say that an inflated defense budget is the cause of our ballooning debt. Those who think that our social safety net programs are counterproductive and wasteful blame our fiscal woes on the welfare state. And so forth.

But this argument misses the forest for the trees. Yes, the budget of virtually every federal department needs to be overhauled. And yes, the spending for countless federal programs needs to be curtailed – if not eliminated altogether. But the real source of our out-of-control national debt isn’t one agency or program or political party – it’s a self-serving political culture in Washington that has been built by politicians of both parties, over the course of decades, who habitually place their short-term career prospects over the long-term interests of the nation.

A case in point is the 21st Century Cures Act, which the House recently passed and the Senate will consider next week.

Those who support the bill proudly claim that it reduces government spending by $6 billion, which is, at best, only a half-truth. The Cures Act does save $6 billion, but it also paves the way for those so-called “savings” to be spent in upcoming years through an appropriations process – and here’s the kicker – that is not subject to the budget caps established in the Budget Control Act.

Proponents of the Cures Act might ask what good just $6 billion in savings would do when the national debt is about to reach $20 trillion, but of course that’s exactly the kind of question that got us into this mess in first place.