Shrinking the Federal Government: Trump Slashes Red Tape and Puts Taxpayers Back in Charge

Washington has spent decades perfecting one thing. Growth. Not economic growth. Government growth. More rules. More forms. More bureaucrats telling families how to live while charging them for the privilege. That cycle is finally being broken.

Under President Trump, the federal government is doing something that once seemed impossible. It is getting smaller.

The Trump Administration eliminated 129 federal regulations for every single new rule. That figure blows past the President’s original goal and shatters the regulatory status quo that has suffocated growth for years. The result is not theoretical. It is tangible. These deregulatory actions have produced a net cost of savings of 211.8 billion dollars, translating to more than 600 dollars per American. That is money back where it belongs. With families, not faceless agencies.

Trump also took on one of Washington’s most protected sacred cows. Taxpayer-funded media. For years, Americans were forced to subsidize outlets that increasingly acted like political operatives. That changed when President Trump signed a historic $ 9 billion rescissions package that defunded NPR and PBS. If these organizations want to editorialize and campaign, they can do so without a government subsidy.

The Administration moved just as aggressively to unwind some of the most expensive and damaging regulations left behind by the Biden years. Trump announced a reset of the unlawful Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards that had driven up vehicle prices and limited consumer choice. This reset is projected to save American families 109 billion dollars over the next five years. It also helps more Americans buy newer, safer vehicles, which experts estimate will save more than 1,500 lives and prevent nearly a quarter million serious injuries through 2050. Less regulation. More safety. A rare Washington win-win.

Small businesses have felt the shift immediately. The Small Business Administration cut average disaster loan approval times down to just 17 days, helping communities recover faster after natural disasters. The agency reduced its workforce by 43 percent and reassigned nearly a third of remaining staff into field roles to provide direct support to entrepreneurs. SBA estimates these actions eliminated roughly 98 billion dollars in regulatory burden and slashed compliance costs that were crushing small businesses. Hundreds of wasteful contracts were scrapped, cutting at least 190 million dollars from agency spending.

Across the federal government, the cleanup continued.

The Department of Health and Human Services terminated 5,629 wasteful contracts. The State Department secured more than 270 million dollars in savings by trimming or terminating hundreds of contracts and cutting travel spending by 100 million dollars compared to last year. Less globetrotting. More discipline.

The Labor Department announced 63 deregulatory actions aimed squarely at job creation and economic opportunity. The Department of Transportation eliminated 600,000 words of regulation and saved taxpayers 14 billion dollars, including 4 billion dollars pulled from California’s long running high speed rail disaster. A project that never ends should not get endless funding.

The Environmental Protection Agency terminated 8.7 billion dollars in Inflation Reduction Act grants, including more than 6.5 billion dollars tied to the Biden Administration’s Solar For All program. No more blank checks for green schemes that raise energy prices and deliver little in return.

Even Treasury got the message. The department eliminated the penny, saving taxpayers 85 million dollars every year in production costs. It also scrapped invasive reporting requirements that buried small businesses in paperwork, saving the economy 84 billion dollars. Treasury delayed costly illicit finance regulations on investment advisers to ensure a real balance between costs and benefits, saving the public more than 1.8 billion dollars.

This is what shrinking government actually looks like. Faster service. Fewer rules. Lower costs. Bureaucracies forced to justify their existence instead of endlessly expanding it.

For Nevada families who balance checkbooks instead of federal budgets, the difference is obvious. One approach cuts waste and restores accountability. The other grows government and shrinks paychecks.

Smaller government is not a slogan. It is a strategy. And it is working.

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