Education Department offers glimpse at its efforts to ease burden of federal rules and asks for suggestions of which to end.
The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday offered a first glimpse at how it is carrying out the Trump administration’s push to ease federal regulations — and asked for advice on what rules it should eliminate.
In February President Trump signed an executive order “seeking to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens placed on the American people” by calling for federal agencies, including the Education Department, to create “regulatory reform” task forces. Those committees will evaluate existing regulations and then make recommendations about which ones to repeal, replace or modify. The order gives priority to curbing regulations that are seen as outdated, unnecessary, ineffective, costly, inconsistent or that inhibit job creation.
The department’s task force issued its first progress report Thursday. While few decisions have been made so far, the 66-page document describes the next steps in the process. It also cites the administration’s previously announced move to hit pause on two “burdensome” regulations: the borrower-defense and gainful-employment rules. The new task force said the looming rule-making process for those rules will be “arduous” and require significant resources and oversight from the department.
This fall the department plans to meet with higher education associations to discuss “regulatory relief,” the task force said.