Republican President Donald Trump and Louisiana GOP Gov. Jeff Landry are both government deregulators. However, ask Google who was the deregulator president and the Regulator Review in 2023 called the late-President Jimmy Carter “The Great Deregulator.”

Former Texas U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm in the Wall Street Journal said, “… The Carter deregulation helped fuel the Reagan economic renaissance and continues to make possible the powerful innovations that remake our world.”

The Cato Institute, described as “an American libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.” offered a different opinion on deregulation.

In 2020, the institute published a report that said, “Donald Trump seems determined to go down in history as a deregulator. This is surprising because no other post-World War II president — except perhaps Ronald Reagan — has exhibited such public commitment to this cause.”

Now with that background, let’s get back to Trump and Landry being on the same page.

Landry was the first witness before the first hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation of the 119^th Congress. The hearing occurred before Trump was inaugurated on Jan.20.

Louisiana’s roads and other infrastructure — like a new Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge — are delayed for years, Landry said, because of federal red tape.

A new Interstate 10 bridge over the Calcasieu River at Lake Charles was delayed for years because of a long delayed environmental impact study necessary because of industrial pollution of the river.

Landry argued that state governments can move much faster and should be trusted to handle the permits and procedures for things like air and water quality.

“Our states are capable,” Landry said. “Give us the ability to issue those things and eliminate the bureaucracy and place that burden on the state, then we won’t be complaining.”

The governor said Congress would still oversee the federal money and could call out state governments if the funds aren’t used as promised.

A U.S. representative from Washington state said Congress hears constant complaints about states taking the federal money for a certain project then using the dollars for other purposes.

Landry said states should be given block grants — money that isn’t allotted for specific uses — and be allowed to use them as necessary to complete infrastructure projects.

We have all been informed about how fast Trump acted after taking office and four days later he suggested eliminating FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He was in California surveying tremendous fire damage and later in North Carolina that was hit hard by Hurricane Helene.

When he got to North Carolina, Trump said Washington could provide the money directly to the states, according to a report in The Advocate.

” … We’re going to recommend that FEMA go away and we pay directly — we pay a percentage to the state. But the state should fix this.”

Trump added, “I’d like to see the states take care of disasters. Let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen.”

Residents in a small town in North Carolina told Trump about wading through waist-deep water to escape from their homes while fearing for their lives. Some said they have battled with insurance companies to get their losses covered.

Trump then did some politicking.

“We’ve come to North Carolina with a simple message,” he said. “You are not forgotten any longer. You were treated very badly by the previous administration.”

We earlier discussed the pardons Trump issued to all of those who participated in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, as his biggest surprise after taking office. Since that event, the Trump administration has fired about 17 inspectors general, which was another surprise that could prove to be extremely damaging.

Inspectors general are installed inside government agencies as an independent check against mismanagement and abuse of power. As one official said, “Inspectors general are the cops on the beat preventing bad things from happening. Their work saves the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year.”

Next up, U.S. health public officials were told to stop working with the World Health Organization and the Justice Department said it had fired more than a dozen employees who worked on criminal prosecutions of Trump.

What comes next is anyone’s guess.

Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at 337-515-8871 or jim.beam.press@gmail.com.

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