Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Saturday that President Donald Trump is now at war with an "unchecked, de facto branch of government: the bureaucratic state" after winning the Supreme Court with Neil Gorsuch's confirmation earlier this month.
Democrats are encouraging "deliberately resistant entrenched civil servants to wage a campaign to subvert the administration's clear intention of deregulation," Gingrich, the former Georgia congressman who was speaker from 1995 to 1999, said in an op-ed for Fox News.
This battle was spurred by Trump's executive order in January seeking to cut "needless red tape draped across the federal government by his predecessor," President Barack Obama, he said.
Gingrich cited Trump's directive to the Labor Department to re-evaluate whether to implement a fiduciary rule that give the agency direct authority over individual retirement accounts.
IRAs are currently regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with "protecting investors," Gingrich said.
The department has determined that the rule would be implemented on June 9, bypassing the review ordered by the White House.
"This was exactly the opposite of President Trump's instructions," Gingrich said.
"For the first time, IRAs would be pulled into a complex Labor Department system created 43 years ago to regulate employee pension and health plans," he added. "Seizing control over IRAs by the Labor Department leads to bigger government, less competition, fewer jobs, and diminished savings for the American worker."
The rule would "result in the 'orphaning' of most ordinary American savers, left to seek advice on saving for their golden years from an online computer program using algorithms no investor would know about or understand," Gingrich said.
"President Trump and the Congress want the rule gone. Business wants the rule gone. Ordinary Americans want the rule gone.
"But none of that matters to the bureaucratic state," he added. "They've lost the battle over the Supreme Court and the president's cabinet.
"More than anything, the swamp wants to win this battle."
Gingrich called on Trump and new Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to "delay indefinitely or completely rescind the fiduciary rule under the secretary's statutory authority.
"More than that," he continued, "the president needs to fully drain the swamp – especially by getting rid of the mutineers at the Department of Labor."
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