This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, May 2nd, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Many states have suspended regulations that hampered public and private responses to COVID-19, and they did so with remarkable speed.

It raises the question were they needed at all.

As states begin to reopen, what regulations should simply be done away with permanently.

Matt Mitchell with the Mercatus Center describes a framework for judging regulations that have no business coming back.

Regular listeners will have heard lots of discussions here about state level regulation and how much of that was either suspended

Some of it was done away with some of it was relaxed in the wake of this pandemic so

How have you what have you seen that you think was notable in this period?

Well, it's pretty extraordinary both in terms of the scope

and the depth of the types of rules and regulations that have been suspended.

So, you know, just a breath, think about it.

Americans for tax reform among many others have been trying to list and keep up with all the

regulations that have been suspended or eased their their list now is up to

400 and many of these are somewhat minor rules. So, you know, the USDA has said that they are going to allow some flexibility in terms of when children can be fed during certain federal from federal programs, school lunch programs and alike.

That's relatively minor.

On the other hand, there's some really well-entrenched regulations

that have been around for decades that you know reformers have been trying to push for

To ease for quite a long time and those are going those are being eased so for example 22 states have moved to ease or suspend what are called

Certificate of Need laws in health care. So it's really, it's amazing. You know, scope of practice

rules at the state level are being suspended barriers to

telehealth New Mexico is allowing Canadian nurses to provide care here in the

...