Why do we have so many federal regulations? Three reasons. First of all, Congress has neither the time nor the expertise to provide legislative answers to every possible regulatory issue in a world in which conditions and technology are changing rapidly. Second, the filibuster and frequently divided government make it impossible for Congress to pass legislation to address regulatory issues that were not anticipated at the time the statute was enacted. Third, if agencies had to start from scratch every time they interpret a vague statute, it would require vastly more resources than they actually have; in addition, the decisions would probably be inconsistent, which would be unfair to the regulated public. Using rules rather than quasi-judicial decisions to fill in the gaps is efficient and fair for everyone.
Musk and Ramaswamy think we have too many rules, but that really isn’t the point; it is the content of the rules, not their number, that matters. From the perspective of the billionaires, the problems are that the agency decisionmakers are predisposed to regulate in a way that hurts business and that the current rules aren’t appropriately responsive to business interests. The logical way to solve these problems is not to refuse to enforce rules, or to mindlessly eliminate masses of them, but to put business-friendly people in charge and to change the Biden rules to ease any unnecessary regulatory burdens. Trump presumably is working on the former; the latter will be a grind, due to the requirements in the APA, and will take years.
Do Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy have the patience to do what it takes to deregulate in a systematic way? I doubt it; they’re more into instant gratification.