Cass Sunstein has defined “sludge” as the friction created by the unnecessary paperwork burdens inhibiting access to government programs. Typically, the term has referred to both costs imposed by the government through regulations or other means, and costs that are imposed in order to access government benefits. The key word in Sunstein’s definition of sludge is “unnecessary.” Of course, the government can impose costs to achieve justifiable, legitimate policy aims, but so many of those costs can seem necessary and yet easily become unnecessary burdens unjustified by social benefits.

The Trump administration has made reducing regulatory costs a priority. And while cartoonish efforts like his Executive Order 14192 command that agencies eliminate 10 regulations for every new regulation would (in the unlikely event it worked as intended) likely catch many necessary requirements along with unnecessary ones and compromise long agreed upon statutory goals, there are unnecessary burdens that are worthy targets of streamlining efforts. I hope that the administration will focus on this sludge.

In my view, there are two related steps that the administration could take to target sludge across the government. The first would be to reinvigorate and then use the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), and the second (which may be necessary to modernize the statute) would entail building a coalition against sludge that crosses ideological lines.

Paperwork Reduction Act

I wrote about the PRA in Regulation previously (Shapiro, 2020). Much of what I wrote still applies because there has been no meaningful reform of the act since my article’s publication—or, for that matter, since the act was last revised in 1995. Congress passed the PRA in 1979 as a reaction to the increased regulatory burden that arose in the 1970s. Congress revised the statute twice, including a wholesale retooling in 1995.

The PRA requires all federal agencies to seek approval from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for any information collection or recordkeeping requirement that is imposed upon 10 or more people. The agencies must also seek public comment and estimate the burden on the public for every approval request. Approvals must be renewed every three years and the process for renewals mirrors the process for initial approvals. The PRA requires OIRA to annually report the total burden of government-imposed information collection requirements.

In the decades since the PRA passed, the burden of information collection requirements has greatly increased, although this is not entirely the fault of the act. Congress has passed many new statutes that impose information collection burdens (some necessary and some sludge) on the public. But the PRA itself has problems. The process for OIRA approval under the PRA is complex, time consuming, and burdensome for agencies. This has the combined effect of deterring agencies from potentially useful activities and reducing the approval process (including for sludge) to a pro forma box-checking process.

If the Trump administration wants to attack sludge, the PRA gives it an already existing statutory tool, but it is a tool that needs reform. Changes to the PRA that allow OIRA to focus its limited time on information collections that are truly sludge would have significant social benefits. Most of these reforms would need to be statutory, which means the Trump administration would need to champion reopening the act to revision and reform. For that effort to be successful, the administration would likely need a different political approach to Congress.

Sludge Hurts Everyone

The PRA passed largely because of support from the business community, which was chafing at the regulatory requirements imposed by agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In my own research, I have spoken to business owners who support the general cause of regulation but hate the paperwork they must complete without any understanding of how it advances regulatory causes. In other words, they hate sludge.

This goes beyond business regulation. In recent years, pioneering work by Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan has highlighted that there are many governmental requirements imposed on people who have been deemed deserving of government benefits that do little to actually screen out ineligible recipients. For instance, the Trump-championed tax act passed in July 2025 added work requirements to the Medicaid program even though 97 percent of current recipients hold a job. For that 97 percent, those requirements merely entail filling out a form, a burden some will no doubt see as onerous enough that it will deter them from applying for Medicaid altogether—indeed, that is what the estimated budget savings assumes. In other words, this too is sludge.

The administration has supported these work requirements, so I realize a comprehensive war on sludge that helps individuals as well as businesses may be politically difficult to achieve in the short run. However, politics is still about coalition building, and I suspect that a PRA reform that meaningfully facilitates cutbacks in sludge for businesses and for beneficiaries of government programs is a winner.

Readings

  • Coglianese, Cary, et al., 2021, “The Deregulation Deception,” Public Law Research Paper 20–44, University of Pennsylvania Law School.
  • Herd, Pamela, and Donald P. Moynihan, 2019, Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means, Russell Sage Foundation.
  • Shapiro, Stuart, 2020, “Reinvigorating the Paperwork Reduction Act,” Regulation 43(3): 36–41.
  • Sunstein, Cass R., 2019, “Sludge and Ordeals,” Duke Law Journal 68(8): 1843–1883.