Regulations Aren’t Killing the Working Class—but the Red Tape Is
It has been more than two weeks since Donald Trump won his second term in office, promising to bring with him a flurry of policies aimed at reducing the size of the federal government. In the aftermath of the loss, Democrats have been soul-searching—resulting in all sorts of postmortems on what went wrong—and casting about for some new way of doing politics. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff for John Fetterman, said (among other things) that Democrats should embrace what he called “supply side progressivism,” achieving limited deregulation for liberal policy goals.
One example cited by Jentleson involved Representative Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez, who recently made a video explaining her opposition to regulations that seemingly prevent daycare workers from peeling fruit for children, because it counts as “food preparation” and therefore would require an establishment to have more sinks. She presented this regulation as a part of a pattern that she’s seen before in Washington, D.C.—part of a “ingrained disregard for working people by policymakers in DC.”
Representative Gluesenkamp-Perez is not wrong to point out that such a regulation may create unintended consequences; her call for ordinary Americans to have more input in how regulations are formed is a noble one. There’s just one problem: As pointed out on X, this was a state law crafted in Olympia, Washington, not a federal rule drafted in Congress. Indeed the “Banana Act” merely regulates that states that require childcare block grants not “prohibit licensed child care providers from performing simple food preparation of fruits and vegetables.” While Representative Glusenkamp-Perez’s video does not explicitly claim it’s a federal regulation, it’s presented in such a way that might make one think its origins were in Washington, D.C.
This type of flattened rhetoric, obscuring actual dynamics in levels of regulation and policy, is not only a lazy political choice on the part of Democrats but a dangerous contribution in an environment ripe for deregulation. Empowered by Supreme Court decisions (such as Loper Bright, which overturned the doctrine of Chevron deference), the incoming Trump administration is set to roll back hundreds of regulations and attack the agencies that oversee them.
Regulation broadly serves the average American—regulating their rights as workers and as consumers, as well as protecting food, water, and air. Any politician fighting for the working class would be wise to defend these regulations, by pointing out numerous recent wins for workers achieved through them. For instance, the Federal Trade Commission banning noncompete clauses freed workers to obtain employment and start businesses in the same field as their previous place of employment. Just recently, the National Labor Relations Board issued a rule that companies cannot force workers to attend meetings about unionization. (This rule will likely be overturned by the next administration.)
It would also be wise to point to the adverse impacts of rolling back regulations. In 2019, the Trump administration allowed pork processing plants to have fewer USDA inspectors—allowing for faster processing lines. Science magazine also found that year that in the two years after Trump took office, Food and Drug Administration enforcement actions dropped dramatically.
We only need to look to recent headlines to see the perils of such an approach: a listeria outbreak tied to a Boar’s Head processing plant that killed 10 people and made 59 ill, possible listeria contamination tied to poultry and other meats from BrucePac, and an E. coli outbreak at a Montana-based meat processing company. With the Boar’s Head outbreak, we know that USDA inspectors flagged problems with the now closed plant in 2022 but that the agency failed to take action.
As Representative Gluesenkamp-Perez said, workers should have a say in what regulations are enacted, and politicians can and should take the time to educate people about upcoming rules on which federal agencies are seeking comment. While agencies are not permitted to make judgments on rules solely on comments (whether in support or against), they are included as part of the calculus. How many Americans know right now that the Occupational Health and Safety Administration is seeking public comment in support of a heat standard that would require employers to protect their workers from the heat? Such a rule would ensure workers get things like water and rest breaks, at a time when such things have come under attack from state governments like Texas and Florida.
Of course, the anger people feel at institutions is real—people do feel like government is not working for them. But this anger cannot be allowed to cannibalize the interests of the working class. Any politician truly interested in the welfare of this group would divert this ire toward the parts of the government that truly impede people’s ability to live a good life. It’s time to take aim at the mountain of requirements and bureaucratic hurdles people must overcome in order to access government services and benefits.
The journalist Annie Lowrey referred to this as the “time tax”—the amount of extra time that people have to spend navigating a complex bureaucratic system in order to access health care, unemployment, financial assistance, and other services. Take SNAP (commonly known as food stamps) as an example: With this program, applicants not only have to meet work requirements and stay under a certain income to qualify, but they also may have to recertify their eligibility through in-person interviews, which can cause them to miss work. Qualifying for these programs often requires navigating multiple pages of forms; there is often a backlog that results in people experiencing long wait times to have their applications processed. If an error is made in the process, these add to the wait. These barriers are what professors Pamela Herd and Donald P. Moynihan refer to as “administrative burdens.”
As Vox’s Abdallah Fayyad points out, simple changes can be made to these programs to prevent people from going through needless hardship. During the early stages of the pandemic, the federal government provided enhanced federal funding to states to keep people continuously enrolled in Medicaid—this skipped the annual reenrollment process that required states to reverify eligibility. This lasted until March of last year, when people began to be disenrolled. While Medicaid enrollments remain higher than pre-pandemic levels, 25 million people ended up losing coverage because of the renewal process—more than 70 percent of the disenrollments were due to procedural reasons, according to data collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Survey data shows that most Americans support reducing these administrative burdens.
Naturally, frustration with bureaucracy extends beyond benefits. Many people can relate to having a tough time with navigating the tax system, often forced to rely on paid services to get the job done. For years, companies like Intuit lobbied to keep the government from offering free filing tools, while they made millions as people used their software to file their taxes. Intuit was recently charged by the Federal Trade Commission for using deceptive marketing tactics, allegedly advertising free services that most people would not end up qualifying for.
Finally, in 2024, the Internal Revenue Service introduced and piloted its own free file system in 12 states: DirectFile. The IRS says that this upcoming tax year, the service will be made available to people in 24 states. When the IRS decided to make DirectFile permanent in 2024, Intuit’s stock fell. Here, the government did not just leave and acquiesce to the demands of industry, as those who want deregulation would argue is necessary—helping the working person looked like the government intervening to compete with industry. (Writing for The New Republic, Bryce Covert reported that those who were eligible to participate in the DirectFile pilot program gave it rave reviews.)
When people try to access benefits and other government services, they are seen as a burden to the state and so they must prove their worthiness by jumping through endless hoops. Meanwhile, deregulation is being laundered as a tool to help average people trying to get by, when in reality it is merely a conduit to allow for greater exploitation. It is quite possible that as a Republican trifecta is sworn in, regular people will be asked to jump even higher, while the bar for regulatory compliance is lowered for corporations.
Politicians who want to uplift the working class should run on a platform that promises to make government work for the people. That means using regulatory powers to protect individuals, encouraging and supporting direct worker input into those regulations, while, at the same time, decreasing the amount of paperwork and strain they have to go through to access government services and benefits. The election results have brought a period of reflection as people ask what went wrong. Especially as a challenging political landscape looms on the horizon, it’s important to be clear on how the government can best work for people—rather than just how it can get out of the way.