Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said government officials have a responsibility to not act when doing so would undermine the role of Congress in making laws.
The Obama administration often tried to do this, and the current Trump is right to try to undo those efforts, he said.
“Those of us in government have a responsibility to exercise restraint and [to] decline to govern by administrative fiat… To use it to set substantive policy is simply wrong,” Acosta said Thursday in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. The speech laid out the administration’s rationale for the effort, one that Acosta said he wholeheartedly backed.
“President Trump has committed — and rightly so — to roll back unnecessary regulation that eliminates jobs, that inhibits job creation or that imposes costs that exceed benefits. American workers and families deserve good, safe jobs and unnecessary impediments to job creation are, simply put, a disservice to all Americans,” Acosta said.
It was the second day in a row that Acosta has defended the administration’s anti-regulatory efforts. On Wednesday he testified before the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
Under Acosta, the Labor Department has begun to revise several rules put in place by the Obama administration that reinterpreted existing regulations. The labor secretary argued that the prior administration had ignored the usual rulemaking process, which resulted in poorly made regulations.
He noted, for example, the Obama administration expanded the circumstances for when lawyers must disclose when they have done consultant work on labor matters for employers. Previously, disclosure was required only if the lawyers spoke to employees. The Obama administration expanded it to include virtually all consulting. The Trump administration is revising the rule.
“The effect of the rule was to discourage employers from consulting with counsel… The freedom to consult with counsel has been and should be sacrosanct in the American tradition and for good reason. Even the American Bar Association came out in opposition to the (previous) administration’s rule,” Acosta said.
