The Republican Study Committee’s new 119-page Budget for the 119th Congress, Restoring America’s Golden Age, covers a wide range of policy priorities—notably a 10-year balanced budget horizon and the repeal of the death tax.
Washington simply does not live within its means—and that must change. That point is elemental. But just as important is the RSC budget’s recognition of the role regulatory burdens play in expanding government’s footprint. America’s $7 trillion annual spending budget is hardly the end of government intervention in the economy. Rules and regulations—issued at a pace of more than 3,000 annually except when President Trump is in office (“only” 2,441 rules were issued in 2025)—constitute a hidden tax of at least $2 trillion per year, and likely several times more than that. Regulatory “budgeting,” therefore, is at least as important as the spending budget itself.
That is why it is especially valuable that the RSC budget endorses more than two dozen regulatory reform measures, some of which would make Trump-era streamlining permanent, while others would go even further. These reforms range from addressing seemingly trivial but telling annoyances—such as showerhead and drinking straw rules—to transformative transparency requirements like those contained in the proposed Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act. The GOOD Act would require centralized portals for sub-regulatory guidance documents, bulletins, agency memoranda, and subsidy, contract, and procurement stipulations—forms of regulatory “dark matter” that can function as binding rules while escaping annual tally in the Federal Register. Unless addressed, federal power will increasingly grow through these surreptitious means.
Budget negotiations, debt-ceiling resolutions, and fiscal agreements and standoffs alike will be prominent in 2026 during the second session of the 119th Congress. An election year complicates matters, but it also creates opportunities to reduce red tape—either through bipartisan agreements to ease compliance for businesses and citizens, or as part of tradeoffs accompanying spending concessions.
While regulatory tweaks alone, short of genuine deconstruction of the administrative state, will not fully right-size government, they remain a necessary complement to spending restraint. The RSC’s call for terminating the Department of Education is notable, but it can only be a beginning. Much of today’s federal spending is already deeply regulatory in nature—consider the CARES Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act—well before regulators even begin issuing rules.
In recognizing the significance of regulatory reform alongside spending restraint, the Republican Study Committee’s new budget blueprint takes potentially transformative steps. Regulatory streamlining must remain central to whatever fiscal year 2026 and 2027 deals emerge. It may be hard to recall today, but cornerstone regulatory management statutes—the Congressional Review Act, the Regulatory Flexibility Act, the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, and the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act—once enjoyed strong bipartisan support. Here’s hoping the new year brings a return to that spirit.
