as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces which are more general powers and those granted to congress. however, successive congress has gradually delegated much of their power to the president or stood idly by as president had served more power that is legislative in nature and effect for president bill clinton's advisor summed up the power of modern executive orders best when he said "stroke of the pen, law of the land, kind of cool". the informal definition as an articulate of what it is actually an accurate description it of the power. defining an executive order specifically despite it being the president's most important means domestically.

in practice a written directive that has the force of law and are issued by the president to direct and manage how federal agencies, employees or department heads operate and perform their duties and to set other policies for the executive branch. the manager statutory requirement is that they must be published in the federal register, the same is true for executive proclamations. nobody even knows the true number. the government did not start systematically numbering them until 1907. that count includes 14,133 executive orders, 10,784 proclamations and any other memoranda directives for the force of law. somewhere totally appropriate. asking the different federal departments what it is that they do here. we are still waiting for an

answer, just joking, but others are also quite positive such as abraham lincoln's emancipation proclamation. others violate, of course, every principle of american liberty such as president franklin delano roosevelt 9066 issued in 1942 that ordered the internment of japanese americans and lawful residents in government camps during world war ii. most, however, consequential of the emancipation proclamation or japanese internment. but nonetheless to affect the lives of americans. they can interpret or expand the scope of legislation beyond its text or congress' intent and the "four and a potable instrumental power". by other actions ordering executive agent these four regulatory rules. they exercise executive power that has grown beyond that

envisioned by the founders with little check. only 14 executive orders have been explicitly struck down by the courts. major of powers are one little oversight. there is no way for that. they do not have to go through the administrative procedures act. they have only revoked for executive order since world war ii and none in the 21st century and as modified a mere 235. not even needing to reference a specific legal authority. for instance, president obama issued 19 executive orders in 2011 that generally claim their justified "by the authority vested in me as president by the constitution and the laws of the united states of america." pretty general. presidents, plaintiffs who challenge in court have the burden of proving -- proving that the order only striking

down if it clearly conflicts with the statute or the constitution. courts have gone so far as to ruled that congress silence on the executive orders post hoc congressional acquiescence of the executive order. the result of such a chaotic and centralized system of power in one man is increased on certainteed, rent seeking polarization and chaos in foreign affairs. all of which undermine limited government individual liberty, free markets and peace. hence, recent publication of our handbook on executive orders and presidential directives which is intended to give ideas to the incoming administration or executive orders that they should revoke. the handbook covers numerous policy areas from reforms to the administrative state to trade in immigration and most other policy areas and between budget

directly referencing and seeking to amend or revoke over 70 executive orders and other directives. here scholars will discuss their contributions of the cato handbook on executive orders and presidential directives and some of the executive orders that the incoming administration should perform or abandon how to better align federal policy with libertarian principles. going first is going to be michael cannon. cato's director of health policy studies. second, travis fisher. i will do all the introductions to get those out of the way. second is travis fisher. cato's director of energy and environmental studies. third eric gomez. research focuses on u.s. military budget enforced posture as well as control and forth will be chris edwards who occupies the family chair in physical studies at catondtor og government.com. lastly, and lisa lee, in

addition to monitoring this panel, i will speak for a few more minutes on some that should be amended and revoked and higher-level reforms to executive orders and executive powers generally. then we will have a conversation on the panel before opening up to questions from the audience and from online. without further ado, michael, please take it away. >> thank you, alex. congress has passed so many laws , regulating some the aspects of our lives that it cannot possibly make all the resulting decisions itself. it relies on executive agencies to make these decisions which means it is advocating the role to make the laws in the executive branch wields far too much power, it wields powers that the constitution does a grant, no state ever ratified and that the constitution itself and the ninth amendment says, actually, you do not have that power. the current administration, for example, used its executive

powers granted to it by congress through various laws here to throw sick people out of their health insurance without so much as a people from healthcare journalists and to spend about $43 billion over the next 10 years without running it by congress first. ....

mostly and in other ways sets prices above where the market would put them and in those cases there is, there can be a legitimate role for the executive branch to reduce the prices that the excessive price that is medicare pays for two private insurance companies, two pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, physicians, skilled nursing facilities and so forth. the executive branch should be using power in this regard because the federal government right now spends more on health care than on national defense. $1.1 trillion each year on major health programs versus about

$900 billion on national defense. and the froth -- the main reason the united states is outlier among advanced nations or such an outlier on healthcare spending. two times as the average nation on medical care, the federal government, what are some of the things that the incoming administration should do with regard to using executive orders to reduce spending. the incoming administration the last time was in power did a number of thicks with executive orders when it came to health care and not so good things. first, the god things. the first trump administration issued executive orders that would have reduced the prices of

medicare there's a lot of pharmaceutical industry rhetoric, importing foreign price controls, just abject nonsense. what they abjected not that they are price controls but set prices. the prices would be lower and they should be lower because the medicare is paying twice as much and there's no reason why taxpayers should be doing and baring disproportionate of the share on research and development. the trump administration, next trump administration reinveigh reinvigorate and bring them down in any way they can or better than that, even better than government price setting at getting prices down,

reinvigorate another executive order regarding importation. importing drugs from other countries, in other words, freeing consumers in the united states and insurance companies to exercise their fundamental human right to trade with other countries doing that would do more to spark price competition the and reduce drug prices in the united states than government price setting would. unfortunately those efforts toward drug importation were anemic and got stalled in the courts but the trump administration could reinvigorate that. and finally the trump administration did have a number of good executive order -- one executive order that led to a number of good rule changes including rules that the added consumer protections to so-called short-term limited duration, these are plans exempt from federal -- health insurance regulation and as a result are able to provide coverage with broader provider networks than obamacare plans at lower premiums. 60% lower than the lowest cost

premiums for lowest cost obamacare plans. the trump administration allowed these plans to offer more consumer protections than the obama administration did previously. the -- the biden administration came in and stripped away those protections, throwing out of health insurance after they get sick and leaving them with nothing. the next trump administration should reinvigorate executive order order. that's not to the say that everything that the trump administration did with executive orders was good, they expanded the medicare program by covering telehealth which is something that congress had not covered previously. they did this during covid for covid reasons and now congress is trying to take that expansion and make it permanent. the trump administration should revoke that expansion. also, they -- the trump administration made it easier for healthcare providers and insurance companies to game

federal payment rules and subsidies for more services through, the trump administration should amend that executive order to direct cms to try new medical reforms rather than rent-seeking provisions the trump administration put in. and i will end with -- well, actually you know what, there were 7 different executive orders, chapters that i contributed to this book because the federal government does a lot in health care and i will leave it at that and leave the rest for discussion. i will add that executive orders are not going to fix failing health care. they might make a small difference in the margin but what we need is congressional action to reform, health insurance regulations ands

drastically eliminate reform in taxes. the only way to restore fundamental right to make their own health decisions. >> thank you. travis. what that meant week 1 executive order that rejoined the paris agreement, canceled the keystone pipeline and did a host of things that the exact opposite of what trump had been doing and, of course, there's a pattern here. i believe when trump gets in office he's going to basically redo all of the things that were undone so we get this aggressive whip saw effect in energy policy because so much is based on executive branch action.

i focus on executive order 13990, rejoined paris, canceled keystone social cost of co2 for if you're giving a global estimate. different calculation if you're doing national or sub national estimate. that was established by executive order that it had to be a global estimate. >> can you talk the for a second about why that's important? >> yeah. it is essentially regulating, unlock a lot of climate related regulations, you can do a lot more if you have a very social cost of carbon in terms of this speeds do into what the environmental protection agency is doing, feeds into vehicle mandates an permeates the cost benefit analysis of the entire government.

so that's why it's a central policy question. that's a theme too that a lot of these executive actions have major policy consequences. these are things that congress really should be addressing. the paris agreement is a great example. you have the biden team treat it, they gave it the weight of an international treaty but if you want to give it the legal weight it would have to be ratified by the senate and different arguments about whether you need to do that now or extension of previous treaty. i think the -- the good government approach to it is to put it up for a vote in the senate but rejoining the paris agreement and then leaving it again, again, we get back into this whip saw, we don't know what the national climate policy is. if it's established by executive

order, we may never know. that's especially problematic in the energy, capital intensive, big investments. you would expect to run for something like 40 years. if you're trying to decide 40-year investment or even in the case of a nuclear power plant that might be an 80-year investment. you're trying to make those investments on a four-year political cycle. there's a huge mismatch and the unfortunate side, i'm not an investor. that's not really my interest. it's the impact on consumers. when you have that much uncertainty we pay in higher electricity bills and everything else. the net zero, policy goal. that's only ever been enacted

through the executive order branch. that's in 14008. by the way, if we are in the 14,000s i feel like executive orders should be in the 14, 15 range total. we are getting into 14,000. we are establishing a long-term, you know, carbon, it's not going to work, it's basically in the the easy come, easy go category. it's not really durable policy. one that i wanted to talk about reinstating and i don't hate all executive orders, there's one that i like. [laughter] >> 14094 biden era executive order it changed fundamentally the way we approach things through a former executive order that i liked.

that's like the name of the meeting, you go to 12866 meetings. it's the fundamental, cost benefit, it's the, what subject, what's -- how major does a regulation have to be and basically the biden team increased that threshold from a hundred million dollars, the one that i really want to focus on, it really comes down, i would call it the tyranny of the social discount rate. you can use social discount rate to justify anything you want. you can make the social cost by lowering the discount rate closer to zero. in essence, if you tinker things with social discount rate established in 12866, sets up omb circumstanceular 4.

it should be established in congress. you can tinker with the numbers and get any number you want. ill like to get 12866 restored. i'm on record saying i like something that bill clinton did. >> policy and not politician thes. >> exactly. if i can read a paragraph, it's music to my ears. here is how it reads, this is as relevant today the as 1993, the american people deserve regulatory system that works for them the and not against them. regulatory system that protects

and improves safety and performance of the economy without imposing unacceptable unreasonable costs on society, recognize that the private sector and private markets are the best engine for economic growth. regulatory approach respect the role of state, local and travel governments, consistent, sensible and understandable we do no have such a regulatory system today. that i think is a perfect encapsulation. the extent we have to have one, we will have one for, you know, at least the short term, that's the good government approach. that's exactly what was -- they tinkered with. the biden team essentially said we are going the tweak this the long extent executive order that a lot of people rely on. i will end on -- >> and it sounds like it properly applied that executive order would necessitate the

deletion of the regulatory state and its entire forty but that's another point, of course. >> some might argue. >> i will pivot to defense because there is one crossover executive order that touches on major contractors, so this was the one and before this executive order i didn't do any research into the federal acquisition regulatory council, the foreign council that sets up a lot of the contracting rules. this executive order essentially applied the paris agreement standards, applied paris agreement and if you want today be a major contract the other trust, think of companies like boeing, even in the defense space, it was you have to submit a plan to a nonprofit based in london by the way, the whole thing is bizarre. you to submit compliance plan and if you're not, if you're not compliant, you can't be a major federal contractor.

that tells me that there's policy preferences baked into that. there's paris agreement compliance is more important than robust national defense. that's what that tells me and things like that, that's another one, that's a major policy question. if we really wanted as national policy, we should have that debate out in open and we should put it through congress. it's a great example of what you can do through an executive order that has massive implications that, again, it was mostly under the radar. when i bring that up to folks, they tend to not know about it. that's exactly why we shouldn't be doing this stuff through executive order and on that note of defense i will turn it over to eric. >> all right, great, i am a bit under the weather so i apologize if my voice is funky or breaks in weird ways. i'm trying to figure that out. >> so when alex reached out and began this process, i was really excited because i, you know,

executive orders are something that i hadn't really done much work on before and i know that in the foreign policy space there's all kinds of good noter for libertarian to be mad at the executive agency for overreach and concentrating powers and things like loss of congressional oversight over u.s. foreign policy and war making, that nature, i thought, okay, cool, i'm going to find some really interesting executive orders. i open the spreadsheet that you sent over that had all of them and the first thought was, holy cow, there's 14,000 of these. the second thought as i started reading through them as i feel in foreign policy executive orders unfortunately unlike i think the healthcare policy issues and the environmental and energy policy issues, there's not much -- it's not as interesting. there are some interesting ones and i will talk about them but i

feel in the foreign policy space as i was reading through them and trying to find which ones to write about, a lot of them had to do with things like sanctions on pretty odious regimes, like north koreas, venezuelas, your irans, and lots of stacking where you would have an initial excuse me, initial executive order sort of saying, hey, we have this country that we are designating as a problem and such reason and different executive orders that amended and added on different entities or individuals that add to the sanctions. so that comprised a lot of resent executive orders especially post global war on terror. and some big themes that stuck out were you have this in the foreign policy space you have a lot of executive orders that exist on the books for things

that have been sort of overtaken by events. executive order number 13303 is a good example of this. it's the iraq national stabilization emergency. this executive order was issued by the george w. bush administration after the fall of the saddam hussein regime in 2003 and basically provides, you know, things that we are going to do in iraq to the try and stabilize it and specifically going after certain political entity thes that existed in iraq under the saddam regime that the administration was trying to get out of there. that was over 20 years ago now. a lot has changed in iraq but this executive order is still on the book. no one has ever repealed it. it's not really being actively used by the administration but if one wanted to, they could. and that kept on come canning up

a lot in my research on these executive orders in the foreign policy space was there's just a lot of undergrowth, if you will. there's a lot of like just junk eo's that have overtaken by events politically in the real world. i think the issue that most abuses of executive orders in

world of foreign policy don't really come from executive orders orders but other things like acts of congress, the patriot act comes to mind and congress sort of willingly advocating roles to the executive branch. congress saying, okay, mr. president, you can do what you want and we will for some reason like never repeal, like never review them and leave them on the books for decades and decades for military action as -- as the executive branch sees fits. that's a problem. we should fix that problem. we should repeal and replace, repeal for and not replace many of the aumf on the books especially 2001 after 911 that basically says anyone with any

affiliation whatsoever so al-qaeda is hereby subject to u.s. military attack. we should get rid of those things because a lot has changed in the years but that isn't going to happen sort of via executive order. that needs to happen through the congress. so i think those are some of the big themes, in addition to get into like the specific executive orders that i wrote about, one of them was i already talked about 13303 and its related executive orders about the iraq national stabilization emergency, the other one, this is one of the better for and straightforward ones on foreign policy in recent years was the obama administration's closing of guantanamo bay. 13492 -- no. yes, 13492. unfortunately it didn't quite get to the point where it was completely closed but the obama administration, later the biden

administration made a lot of progress going through detainees who hadn't been formerly charged with anything and either giving them trials and determining guilt or innocence or sending them back to their countries of origins and to send them in the care of friends and allies not always with the best human rights records. but i don't know what else -- the trump administration revoked that executive order with a different one. when the trump administration came in, they issued executive order 13823 that basically said we are not closing guantanamo bay anymore and we will keep it open as detention facility. unfortunately with trump 202 that probably isn't going to get reversed. so i think that one is going to stay on the books. i already talked about iraq and

the third one i wrote about was reporting of u.s. military strikes outside of areas of act of hostilities. this was one that the obama administration initiated. i don't -- i forgot to write down the number so i forgot that off the top of my head, basically a reporting requirement for if the u.s. conducts military operations outside of certain countries that result in civilian harm that there would be public accounting. i think getting back to a state where those things are actively reported on would be helpful, if

you don't know about them, you can't really stop them. so there are several more that relate to specific sanctions and classification of information. so i urge you to check out those sections written by me and foreign policy colleagues. thank you. >> thanks, eric. i wrote about the federal bureaucracy and executive orders that trump and biden have issued regarding the federal bureaucracy. trump will likely revoke the number of biden executive orders regarding the bureaucracy and reissue eo's that he issued during his first term the.

that compares to average sector work e earning $94,000 a year, so federal workers are well paid, but we need improvements and efficiency and accountability in the federal bureaucracy. i'm going to the talk about two issues. first issue removing federal issue per poor performance and misconduct is very difficult in the federal government. federal employees are fired at just one sixth of the rate that workers are fired in the private sector and the federal senior executive service, they're fired 120th of a rate that corporate ceo's are fired in america. so we need reform to ease worker

removal. federal workers think that it is too difficult to properly deal with bad workers in the federal government. surveys of federal workers find that just 41% of federal supervisors think that they could remove worker for poor performance conduct and just 21% of federal supervisors think that they could remove a worker for poor performance. removals take a huge amount of effort for supervisors so they generally don't bother even initiating the progress so federal agencies tend to get piled up of poor workers who are not doing their jobs. so in 2018 trump signed eo to streamline the firing of federal workers. there was a slew of litigation that -- that followed that order, then president biden revoked it but trump will likely reissue that eo to ease the

removal of bad federal workers. then in 2020 trump signed eo13957 to remove civil service protections from some senior policy positions making it easier for incoming president to both hire and fire from certain senior positions related to -- that are directly related to his or her public policy. this is called schedule f. biden when he came to office respoked eo on this issue but trump will likely reissue it when he comes into office. so that's the removal of federal workers. federal unions. in my view none should be. president franklin roosevelt wrote in 1937 in a letter to labor leader, quote, collective bargaining cannot be transplant intoed the public sector. it has distinct and surmountable

limitations when apply today personnel, unquote. so i'm with fdr. trump hasn't said he's in favor of that. but he signed a number of co's to trim back federal union power. this is called official time union workers who are being paid by the taxpayers and their sally and they're using their time and resources for union activities. so biden came into office and rescinded trump's eo but trump will likely reissue that.

i think these sorts of reform would be reasonable. i think the federal workers should not be an island of elite workers that are not subject for type of performance requirement that we take for granted in the private sector. thanks, everyone, for coming. well, thanks, chris, i will talk the about two executive orders that the incoming administration should amend and why and talk about laud broader reforms. identified two eo's. affirmative action by executive order, specifically two executive orders one issued by president lyndon johnson and another one by president richard nixon. these executive orders are 11246 and 11478 affirmative action is

an expansive largely in effective discriminatory policy seeks to benefit some applicants to federal jobs and contractors because of their race, color, religion, handicap at the expense of others. the eo's have forced and incentivize many firms to do so as well if they are federal contractors or hope to sign government contracts in the future. now i think the policies are bad on their face. i think they violate libertarian principles on their face but one of the other downsides of them is that they create within firms that are contractors sort of a larger hr apparatus set up to try to comply with affirmative

action rules and this has down stream consequence that is can be very frustrating for other people who are working in american firms since basically every large company in the united states is a federal contractor to one extent or another, so it has a very frustrating down stream consequences for a lot of people. so affirmative action and federal hiring and contract is entirely created by executive order in the u.s. some people have made the argument that it's unlawful under the civil rights act but more importantly i think potentially being unlawful as it runs against our principles of individual liberty, limited governments, free markets. these executive orders should be amended to revoke affirmative action and i don't say amend or revoke those executive orders in total because the executive orders do also and other portions of the civil rights act which do not discriminate against americans but actually mandate that the government

actively stop discriminating against people based on their race, religion and other protected classes, however, affirmative action is the exception to that and so therefore i want to amend these executive orders to remove the discriminatory policy enacted through affirmative action. now you heard a lot of the conversation on the panel about dekale of executive orders that have gone in some extreme detail and some of the action that is executive orders take and some aspects of the u.s. economy and american lives that they control and this regard, eo's are really a symptom of the bigger problem in the american government and the symptom is that the froth does way too much at too large of a scale involved in too many americans lives in too many details so i think a large part of this problem we probably wouldn't be having this panel if

the froth were 1 to 2 percentage points of gdp than what the federal government is now. it does entirely too much. when the government shrinks and does many things. in terms of bigger reforms that congress and the courts and even the president can do to reduce the power of executive orders, i don't expect the president himself or in the future herself to reduce the power that they have over or through executive order but it's important to put them out. so first congress should revoke or amend the 137 different statutes that grant the president extraordinary powers during emergencies. emergency that is the president himself declares. so it's the a wonderful little loop in there where the president gets to declare an

emergency and by declaring emergency and enormous powers, additional 13 emergencies where the congress declares emergency and national emergency that grants the president more powers. at a very minimum, the congress should be able to review the grants of emergency shortly after issuance to be able to say that, yes, this is an emergency. at best we should just repeal or congress should repeal all those designation it is and national emergency. another one, of course, is to put the president back to constitutionally limited role. one great ways to get there is the separation of powers act which has been proposed in congress every year for more than 25 -- for about 25 years or so. and then, of course, the rein's act, limits the power of new regulations, of course, should expand the power of

nondelegation to limit the power of congress delegate power to the executive branch, there should be increased oversight on executive orders including, of course, spanning checks and balances. congress should force executive orders to be subject to procedural requirements of administrative procedure act which require notice to propose executive orders, public comment on them, final eo's to be issued, et cetera, basically entire apparatus of former rule making should be applied to executive orders. nice little thing that could be done, there should be for automatic exper my ration of executive orders. so that future presidency and administration should have to review them when they come up and say, yes, we think this is a good idea.

until then, americans are going to have to adapt to executive orders that increase uncertainty, they certainly increase political polarization and they increase policy chaos. there's going to be more and more chaos along these lines every 48 years. we saw a flurry of executive chaos when president trump first took office in 2015 -- '17 with numerous repeals and reissue answers of executive orders. we saw another flurry of chaos in 2021 when president biden took office and we will see yet another blizzard of chaos in just 11 days when president trump takes office again. i'm frankly getting sick of this

chaos. i think americans are starting to get a little sick of it and if you run in this country or have other types of productive activity you're engaged i think you're sick of it as well. i think it's high time that we put this activity back in its proper constitutional box. i'm going to start with a few sort of topic to the talk about and then open it up to questions from the audience and from online. basically from everybody on the panel, some of you discussed this a little bit but which of the eo's, executive orders that you covered that you think president trump is most likely to revoke, reamend, reinstate and if there aren't any that he is, which one should he, i will start with you, travis? >> most of week one biden

actions are week one. net zero goals, the paris agreement, keystone xl, things like that, i would expect and we've seen some evidence of where trump is leaning instead of a net zero goal he is going to appoint a secretary of energy who wants zero energy poverty as a goal. i think that's a much different framing so i would expect those to go so all of the biden week one stuff is going to be trump week one stuff. whole government approach to the climate crisis. you'll hear stark change in terminology, climate crisis is not going to be in the vocabulary, one thing that is interesting and this is a word of caution i think there's a good chance that trump -- he's indicated this that he's going to declare a national emergency on the energy front and use some sort of emergency authorities to procure new power.

i don't know what that looks like, whether that's develop new power plants, new transmission lines, but for i would expect early action on that front, so i'm cautiously optimistic that the eo's that i didn't like are going to go away and pessimistic that there's emergency authority. so biden's credit he never officially claimed that there was a climate emergency. he was getting on a pressure to declare a climate emergency. the fact that trump might come in and declare an energy emergency, i think if he's going further in executive order than biden did, that's a bad sign. we don't want the president to &ate construction of power plants. yes. any others. one i didn't mention is mask wearing.

i think he's -- there's a god chance that the president trump will reinstate the rules that he finalized in 2018 that the -- that added consumer protections to these obamacare complement plans because he already did it. do this again, carbon copy of what he did, just a few years ago, but that the does highlight one of the problems with policy making by executive order and policy making by -- by executive branch agencies even through rule-making process.

for four years you can buy a health insurance where you won't get thrown out of it after you get sick and then for the next four years you're subject to those regulations again and it makes it really hard for consumers to navigate that, that environment but also for insurance companies to invest in what it would take to offer better more affordable coverage over the long term. so and then there are a couple of eo's that i mentioned having to do with say prescription drugs and prescription drug prices and i think still is something that captures donald trump's attention. the excessive prices that we often pay for pharmaceuticals in the the united states. he did say i think in 2016 that the pharmaceutical companies are getting away with murder and it date surprise a lot of people that he was lining up with democrats rather than his own party when he introduced that

executive order calling on -- and those regulations calling on medicare to pay the prices it pay for drugs as prices in other countries. that really ran into opposition mostly from the pharmaceutical industry that took the administration to court and -- and also lobbied congress pretty heavily. the pharmaceutical city spends 2.7 times what the entire defense industry on lobbying congress. i think there's a good chance that president trump win -- he will try those as well. >> i think i remember hearing those ads on the radio when they were lobbying. 2 of the 3i talked about were

things that trump like provoked himself or did something to sort of do the opposite of what i want to happen, so i don't think those will happen. >> of the 3 of ending iraq stabilization emergency maybe the most likely in a sort of indirect way. a lot depends on how the trump 2.0 foreign policy plays out in the middle east. i think that there is -- i think europe and asia are a bit better known. i think in asia or trump is going to continue u.s. competitive policies towards china with the people that he's bringing into the dod at high levels and with rubio as secretary of state, you know, and i think that the focus of american foreign policy will probably shift towards asia more

so. and in europe, i think, an attempt to wind down the european war. nato partners being like you have to step up to the plate on spending and that sort of thing. the middle east is more varied. i think trump has said a lot of things about not wanting to be in any new wars or trying to avoid that but he's hawkish towards iran, he i think he will be very supportive of israel in its current military actions around the region which might carry a risk of drawing the united states into a regional conflict if things escalate beyond where they are currently. so it's hard to say. on the one hand you have that impulse of i want to keep the united states directly out of conflict which is a good thing but, on the other hand, you have track record of we will let the partners in the middle east kind of do what they want and if that

draws us in, it's an open question, it's the unknown. i think you might see if the more less interventionist thread holds, you might see the u.s. winding down military presence in the middle east which could include winding down the iraq presence which i think is one of the most strategically and coherent things. we keep -- we need to keep them here because they keep getting attacked because they are here and, you know, if isis is gone, trump said in his first term then what are they doing exactly. it's very -- we will see. >> i want to quick underline. two things that are interesting that other panelists touched on, ping-pong back and forth, there's no doubt that washington has become more polarized.

president carter who i think the memorial service is going on today was a deregulator followed by ronald reagan who was a deregulator. president clint when was a cep tryst. ronald reagan issued a quite a famous executive order on federalist guiding the federal agencies not to step in the way of proper state and local authorities. president clinton repealed that executive order but he issued a new executive order on federalism which read pretty well actually. that seems that it's going to continue on no end because the parties seem to be permanently off in their separate corners.

the second item that i think is really interesting that's the highlight of today, how something executive orders are tied to federal contracting. federal contracting is a giant power of the federal government and the executive branch in particular that it's the $800 billion a year of stuff the federal government mainly military but also department of energy, the veterans health administration, lots of other agencies. this is an enormous power and so the executive orders and regulations get tied to that the -- to that power. i think that's a bit of an underreported, you know, huge pow they're the federal government has. >> yeah, certainly something that's been highlighted by i lon musk and ramaswamy and tweets about this dodge department of government efficiency commission. i'd like to open it up to some questions from the audience both

online and in person. the audience online may join the conversation and submit questions directly on the event web page, on facebook, youtube or on x also known as twitter, formerly known as twitter using #catocan events, please speak clearly and directly into the microphones so everyone in the auditorium can hear the question and please -- this is from anonymous. i think tariffs can be imposed via executive orders, can we talk the about how trump can use eo's to impose tariffs? >> i can fill in that gap very quickly. under the constitution i have a handy copy right here. available from us but also on the internet at a price of zero.

the constitution article 1, section 8 enumerates the power for congress to set tariffs and trade policy over the generations congress has essentially given an enormous amount of power to the executive order and the presidents and presidents have used that authority to issue mostly proclamations which are a different species of executive order by really not that different in effect basically different more informed than function, but there are numerous amount of proclamations so while we have a whole section here about trade, we didn't talk about it very much because most of our recommendations would not be interesting to the incoming administration at all on trade, but since this is the cato institute and we stand on principles i'm going to go through some of those very quickly.

10779. these are proclamations issued by both the trump and biden administration that is put into effect tariffs on aluminum, tariffs on steel and tariffs on certain solar panels imports into the united states, tariffs issued by the trump administration first time outright, strengthened by the biden administration or put in effect by the biden administration. so i do not expect the incoming trump administration to revoke any of the proclamations that they put into effect. another series of executive orders that have in effect on trade, of course, the buy and hire american requirements.

these should, of course, be revoked and basically raise the prices and cost of for americans seeking construction domestically and also most especially for federal contractors and the federal government to build. so i'm of two minds about this in some ways. of course, i don't want any trade restrictions and i don't want the federal government to have to spend more money in its construction than it has to but construction projects are also very wasteful and destructive. so maybe we get fear of them with higher cost. i'm tongue-in-cheek on this in several portions but, yes, the federal government should revoke all of these.

yes, good question from the audience. the power of the president to raise the prices and costs for americans through executive orders and executive orders actions on trade is virtually unlimited. one thing if i can add to that, page 20, it's very handy by the way, amazing handbook. this was anti-china executive order. we were worried that large transformers that if they're coming from china, we are worried that they have some sort of bugs in them, timely controlled. we are worried that the transformers will be shut down by china as part of some like massive attack. so the executive orders basically said we don't want transformers from china. unfortunately we do get a lot of transformers from china and the

tariffs against mexico because we get a lot of transformers from mexico as well. so it's not exactly a tariff but there are sort of national security, you know, the connection is tenuous. i'm not sure that there ever was a connection. there's a quick story here that this was in 2018, 19, the department of energy was ordering its own transformers that has massive transmission facilities especially so going from china to the port of houston. they took it apart. i never got the after report on that. >> this is when you were at the doe or right after? >> i think to seizure right was after i left. i had nothing to do with it. the point is, if they had found something, in f there had been a justification for this block against chinese transformers i

think it would have been more widely reported. >> fun and interesting ways that determine adversary can get into your systems beyond just, you know, this. so, yeah. >> not exactly a tariff but we have no proof but we are worried that there's a security threat so we are going to cut off this very sorely needed resource from a country that we don't like and that's the kind of executive the action. >> while we sit here, the fires raging through multiple parts of los angeles. they have destroyed more than a thousand structures, displaced more -- thousands of people from their homes and cost 5 lives last time i checked. there are have been 5 fatalities from the fire and in a lot of these parts of los angeles government price controls on health insurance, these are

binding price ceilings that the government did set the prices too low cost home owners insurers to flee the markets. a lot of those people who just lost their homes didn't have any -- i'm a healthcare guy, any homeowners insurance and they are going to have to rebuild without homeowners insurance. so it would be -- enormous help if the incoming administration could use its -- the possibly illegitimate powers that it has to eliminate a lot of these trade barriers that are jacking up the cost of construction, the cost of material the, the cost of labor and the incoming president should do this even though the people in these neighborhoods probably did not vote for him. he should do that because it's the right thing to do. these people are suffering and their government is standing in the way.

let's open it up to questions from the audience. please make sure you to the ask a question when you get the microphone. i believe the federal government has relied and used executive orders and the executive branch because of gridlock and polarization in congress, so my question for you guys is how do we invigorate congress to step up and get stuff done to make the laws and to do what the constitution vested to do so that the executive branch no longer overreaches and makes laws via executive orders.

congress has pass sod many programs into law. $800 billion of procurement every year. the government is so massive that congress -- everyone compliance of giant omnibus bills that congress passes rightfully. thousands of pages long. well, that's -- the government is so massive, that's kind of what they have to do to get these bills through so the only solution really to a lot of this is we have to cut out of the federal government activities that it shouldn't be doing and particular activities at that state and local governments can handle, refocus the federal government, national issues, national defense, get state and local activities out of washington congress can focus more on detailed law making.

that's a great question. i think the chicken and the egg. i think there's lots of reasons why we kind of exist in that gridlock state that we do so trying to find the first threat to pull is tricky. in my world of foreign policy, i think that there was this interesting attempt by -- we actually did a cato event on it. in december we had senator chris murphy come here and talk about a piece of legislation on the the war powers act. that was going to try to do is reform arms sale, aumf processes and one other thing that i'm forgetting off the top of my head. that was an interesting attempt because it was bipartisan, it was coming out of the senate and initially biden had kind of

signaled an openness to signing such legislation. i think part of the problem on the foreign policy front is if congress does more, that's what success looks like, it would mean like the presidential powers being curtailed or really going back in line to what the constitution says. and presidents are to give up that power. so even if you have this situation where, you know, the congress has stepped up or tried to -- tried to do something to kind of reverse some of the negative things of executive power or concentration and the president was like, oh, yeah, i would be open to this and then the ukraine war happens in early 2022 and, you know, i need those powers now because there's now an international conflict. so it's very difficult and like, yeah, if there was an easy

answer to like get congress to do its job fees, i wish we had it. >> so it is a really good question, a really good one. how do you get congress to do its job. >> yeah. we can talk about examples of how they've done that. under judiciary steps in and does something -- fareros the ne executive branch and upsets congress, they won't be able to elect president and change

interpretation, they are bound by the court's decision, congress would have to act. that i think was a positive step in the right direction because it'll get congress to legislate. it'll force people to focus their desire for policy changes on congress rather than on the executive branch. but as for how do we -- i don't think that is going to result in dramatic reductions. you would think congress would hate that but if you're paying attention to the budget negotiations you might have seen that what republicans were trying to do was rescind that rule but keep that spending because went into the base lane and wanted to spend it on their own priorities but what the executive branch did was get around the tricky rules that -- that forced them to come up with ways of paying for their new

spending. congress is kind of in on it and one despairs of how -- coming up with ways of getting congress to do do legislating to get that all these decisions out of the hands of the executive branch and to get congress to do less. one scenario that i can envision is, i don't know why no entrepreneurial politicians have taken on the issue of balanced budget amendment but polls extremely well outside of washington, d.c. and the ratification process for such an amendment would change the political dynamic around spending as well as create a legal constraint on congress' ability to just keep spending more money and delegating more power to the executive branch, but at some point we are going to run against a limit on congress' ability to borrow to

spend, finance all the spending through borrowing. i will try to be once. the west virginia epa case, established a majority opinion, major questions doctrine. this is the epa through executive actions trying to do things that were major policy questions that should only be resolved by congress. it was actually the supreme court again who came in and sort of, that was the check and balance. the supreme court telling the executive branch you may not do this.

this is a -- this is a law-making authority that only congress has. and that, i think, was huge win and, you know, the only caveat there epa came back and tried to do it again but we will see where that goes. but the other thing i wanted to note, i'm not sure that it's binary thing either the executive branch or congress does it. i completely agree with the panel that the federal government should be doing a lot less especially the executive branch and you can imagine a world and i think we used to live in this world and we could again where we have a presidential election and half of the country is okay with it and the other half of the country is okay with it. this is a catastrophe and half of the country is ecstatic. that only comes about when you have so much writing on presidential authority itself. so sort of the way the to diffuse a lot of that, have the

executive branch do a lot less. i'm inspired by what the supreme court has been doing in both the chevron case and epa case. >> i love the optimism on this panel about this. i will bring in some little bit more pessimism, i guess about this. if you recall when the framers wrote the constitution madison specifically designed it they talked about balancing interest against interest and creating checks and balances, right. one of the things they never really considered that congress would want to give up all of its power to somebody else as we know that -- or not all of its power i exaggerate but a good amount of its power and so the realization that politicians have incentives just like everybody else, the main incentive is to get elected and

to hold jobs for as long as possible and defend on self-interest working and however the framers were optimistic to get elected in congress by merely wielding power. maybe even before the new deal era but definitely since this, they give power to the president and things go well, congress will take power and give power to the president and they can blame the president so it's a pretty good mechanism for members of congress to stay in power and keep getting elected. this, of course, has increased polarization so congress is not doing as many types of bills, big reforms and that's mostly positive from some of our perspectives. the last big ones were obamacare was a big one. that wasn't positive at all. but one of the other factors that comes into that, of course,

is that the president tries to make policy through a large number of executive orders that increases polarization which means a lot more rides on every single election and that's a negative trend. how can we fix this, that's a great question. we have some ideas in the final chapter of the handbook of cato handbook on executive orders that i recommend you to check out but we did talk about a large number of them on the panel. another question from the audience, we have a question in the back over there. >> ethan yang, legal studies department here. my question is what prospects do you see for congress to exercise oversight function or perhaps pass any laws that would leave the president's power and perhaps maybe democrats slip one in the chambers in the next

term. i was wondering what is the prospect for something like that? >> over the next two years pretty much zero. republican congress can hold trump administration to account. i think that's right, the general cycle is that when there's a republican president democrats start to talk about restraints and executive power when there's a democratic president, there are some good people in the senate and in congress who are fairly consistently up hosed through executive order, mike lee has introduced several bills to restrain and reform more powers, for instance, and other aspects, that's correct,. >> i think he was on the one that murphy -- >> yeah, they wanted revoke or rescind, build a higher wall around the president's war powers.

rand paul is fairly in favor of that. lots of democrats. elizabeth warren has been in favor. and progressives. progressives and aoc, sort of -- what's their group called. >> the squad. >> the squad. it shrunk recently. so i think there's a solid core of people in congress who want to reduce the executive powers on some dimensions but most of the time we hear about it through a partisan lens so i'm not super optimistic about it. >> yeah, in the back. was there somebody standing in the back. never mind, how about this gentleman right here. >> i want to thank you. it seems like some of the español speakers have touched on the repeal of the chevron doctrine by the supreme court

recently and i'm wondering in the absence of effective legislation by congress do we really want the judiciary to be interpreting what congress means rather than the specialist who presume perhaps are not lawyers, are not constitutional scholars but nevertheless presumably would have the expertise to give an effective interpretation of what congress had meant? >> so that's the big debate between adherence of the chevron doctrine which the supreme court has scrapped versus those who want the judiciary to play a more robust role in interpreting the law and weighing in on agency interpretations of the law. the -- the chevron crowd will say, expertise, scientists from the epa and we've got economists elsewhere and somewhere, and --

and they understand these areas rather than a judge than journalist. yes, and a lot of these questions are not questions of -- they're not scientific questions and they're not even value-based questions about how you trade off cost versus benefit fors. they are legal questions about what this mean and the supreme court was saying, we are not going defer to the agencies on these legal questions about what these terms mean and how to interpret statutes. that is the province of lawyers and judges specifically. so i think it's a little inaccurative for chevron crowd to frame the issue that way and the example that i often cite is implementation of what was once

the affordable care act which is now obamacare which is affordable care act amended by the executive the and judicial branches, the one executive branch agency said you know what, we want to interpret this term established by the state to mean establish by the state or the froth as if there were no difference between the two. well, that's not really a technical agency -- technical issue where only the agency has expertise, right, this is a legal question. is the federal government a state? no, we are not going to defer to you on this. we are going to answer this question.

>> it's a great question. i have a story that helps inform all of this. i think we all agree that we were due for a course correction. open question whether congress start to put more specificity in the statutes. i think that's sort of the best outcome. we will see if they do that. the course correction was very necessary and my personal story i was -- we issued an order, was going through the court review process, the argument that the court of appeals, i went there in person and kind of cool to see the work that i was doing scrutinized by judges and unfortunately there wasn't much scrutiny. the panel of judges said chevron about a hundred times and just said, well, we are going to defer to the agency because chevron, chevron. i think the amount of scrutiny that federal agencies receive i think it was bound to be, we needed that course correction. there needed to be more scrutiny. even just the posture of the

federal agencies themselves, they will probably do better work knowing that it's going to face tougher scrutiny. that deferral, i don't know where this the sweet spot is. i know that it was the course -- i was glad to see that change. this gentleman right here. >> hey, retired. any comment on the role of optics in reform and just to give you an example, the president revoke 13941 the headlines write themselves, president against improving rural health and telehealth access. before we get into deeper issues just a pure optics. >> well, right, and i forgot was it the trump or the biden -- it was trump administration rule?

the telehealth one? covid hits, medicare isn't paying for telehealth visits and medicare -- medicare bureaucracy decides from assist of president trump, hey, start paying for the thing that you weren't paying for before. usually to spend money you need act of congress but, you know, that's not how we operate anymore. so they do this, well, we are not going to call the this usurping congress' executive order. we are not going to call the economic planning, we are going to improving the rural healthcare order. so we call the improving rural health access executive order and that makes it harder to argue against because who is against rural health access. but i think the way to combat it, you frame the executive order the other way, you say

that this was an unwarranted or even say temporary expansion of subsidiaries that congress never authorized or eliminating unauthorized subsidies executive order, something like that. now are you going to get the same president who issued the first one to issue the second one, no, probably not. you don't want to be the antiscience or antipublic health but i think what trump will do is reframe things, proenergy. energy dominance and things like that. i'm not as word about the optics especially because what we are dealing with. i think he can handle the

marketing side of it and the framing, but i mean, it is -- these things have clever names and try to revoke something protecting public the optics are not great but it's the matter of framing. >> he sure can. time for one more quick question and answer. let's go with this gentleman right there. >> thank you. if the president issues an executive order how much does timedoes congress have to act o? >> there's no like time limit in there. so if congress -- the president for issues executive order there's not a timer. >> doesn't get any say at all. >> congress can pass a law revoking that at any time and if the president vetoes that then it would have to be a super majority in both houses to get

over that. there have been some -- there have been about 235 different amendments or changes to the executive orders to statutes but one of the main ways that executive orders are affected by legislation is by turning them into statutes, so congress after the fact, hey, i really like this idea. we will turn into law. this happened several times with civil service rules that the president will put in to favor the federal bureaucracy as a voting group usually and then congress will say, no, no, we really like the civil service. we really want them to be pro us at this time in congress and that will put that in the statute. there's no set timeline. there's really no review of executive order except somebody has court case and they sue about it and the court basically

bends over backwards to the give to the executive which they do. there are a bunch of complicated rules about this. basically if an executive order is entirely contrary to statute or the constitution, then courts will step in, they rarely do that, the most famous example is a youngtown case where president truman issued an executive order and nationalized the steel industry in the korean war and contrary to statute and this is wrong, they have rules in there from when they judge it but the courts have not done a great job of policing executive orders, they need to do a better job but -- congress does as well. so i think with that, we are over the time. we've got 40 seconds so i can actually say thank you. so thank you, everybody, for coming to our event here at cato. please join us upstairs where we have lunch and beverages and additional conversation about

this topic, so thank you very much to all of you who joined online on television and here in the audience. thank you to all the speakers as well. [applause]