British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned about excessive regulation.

"If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law," he said.

George Mason University analyzed the 103 million words in the Code of Federal Regulations, contained in more than 175,000 pages. As a presidential candidate, Dr. Ben Carson said a stack of all federal regulations would rival a three-story building. The word count would equal 206,000 Gazette editorials.

Regulations impose rules on small business, big business and government agencies. They affect all components of our economy.

In an article for U.S. News & World Report, titled "Red Tape Kills Jobs," two economics professors summarized the George Mason study.

"Federal regulation increased 28 percent from 1997 to 2012. The economy of the late '90s is not usually remembered as a time when unregulated firms were wreaking havoc on the economy. Our study results suggest that even just returning to the modestly lower level of regulation of the late '90s would lead to over 6,000 new businesses being started and 100,000 new jobs being created every year."

A wide array of economists argue regulations encourage mortgage brokers to generate millions of bad loans that caused the housing crisis of 2008. Lending regulations had been imposed with the good intention of increasing home ownership but had the unintended consequence of extending loans to people with no means to repay them. A less-regulated mortgage market made loans based on data, not good will by government coercion.

The Wall Street Journal said in 2009: ""Who wanted these dicey loans? The data shows that the principal buyers were insured banks, government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the FHA — all government agencies or private companies forced to comply with government mandates."

President Donald Trump has long promised to roll back regulations, ridding society of the least helpful, most damaging and expensive. He wants a society in which regulations are in proper perspective with natural economic forces of incentive and restraint.

Monday, Trump issued an executive order that may help achieve the goal. The order's key phrase is, "for every one new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations be identified for elimination."

The Gazette's editorial board recommended this long ago, back when the idea sounded no less marginal or extreme than the notion of Trump becoming president.

The ratchet-down decree won't reduce regulations to one, a few or a few thousand. It's a trial balloon, effective only for the fiscal year 2017.

The order will force heads of bureaucracies to decide whether proposed new rules are worth the cost. It is likely to result in helpful, cost-effective regulations at a cost of nixing those that do more harm than good.

We don't want a return to the days of industry dumping toxic sludge into rivers without consequence. Conversely, we could benefit from a vast reduction in meaningless make-work requirements that impose expenses on businesses and their consumers.

Our market, liberated to make the world a better place, can create great jobs and amazing products. Like a competitive sport, it must be guided by a reasonable set of rules. The rules should not smother us, making compliance a greater challenge than a success. Let's hope Trump's temporary order moves us in the right direction.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE