The Trump administration has issued its fiscal year 2019 status update on one-in, two-out –“Regulatory Reform Results for Fiscal Year 2019.”

According to the administration, agencies issued 61 “significant deregulatory actions,” and 35 significant regulatory ones, for a ratio of 1.7 to 1.

“Close to one-in, two-out, but not quite,” commented the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The fiscal year-end 2018 update  showed 57 significant deregulatory actions and 14 significant regulatory actions were completed, for a ratio of four to one.

In any event, the leading edge of the one-in, two-out is the capping of spending rather than the ratio of cuts to addition. In the new accounting for 2019, the administration claims to have eliminated $13.5 billion in overall regulatory costs across the government, and over $50 billion in overall regulatory costs since 2017. Using different methodologies, the Council of Economic Advisers estimates far more.

Criticisms notwithstanding, other presidents have not implemented a program as ambitious as Trump’s.