The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Donald Trump’s recent flurry of executive orders mandates that for every new regulation issued by any agency, two must be eliminated. This comes on top of a federal hiring freeze and vows to reduce administrative bloat and otherwise force the government bureaucracy to conform to the kinds of expectations that govern private business.

While Trump sees himself as an outsider president bringing new ideas to Washington, these particular ideas would be painfully familiar to his predecessors. For the past century, presidents of both parties have sought to rein in the federal bureaucracy. Most h...