Leadership Quote by Fred Thompson

This is the sound of technocracy being put back in its place. Fred Thompson’s line treats cost-benefit analysis as useful but ultimately subordinate: a flashlight, not a steering wheel. The phrasing is lawyerly on purpose. “Important tool” offers a nod to managerial rationality, the kind of language that reassures businesses and moderates that agencies aren’t making rules by vibes. Then comes the hard boundary: “do not trump existing law.” “Trump” is doing heavy work here, casting economic calculus as an upstart trying to overrule democratic authority.

The intent is both procedural and political. Procedurally, Thompson is reminding regulators and courts that statutes aren’t optional, even when spreadsheets suggest otherwise. Politically, he’s staking out a conservative skepticism toward the administrative state while avoiding an outright attack on regulation. Instead of arguing about whether a particular rule is good or bad, he frames the debate as one of legitimacy: agencies must execute law, not rewrite it under the cover of efficiency.

The subtext is a warning against what critics see as regulation-by-economist. Cost-benefit analysis can quietly encode value judgments - whose risks count, which harms get discounted, what’s priced and what’s treated as priceless. By anchoring everything to “existing law,” Thompson invokes the hierarchy that matters in Washington fights: Congress writes mandates; agencies implement; analysts advise. It’s a line designed to discipline bureaucratic ambition, but also to protect statutory constraints from being diluted by the seemingly neutral authority of numbers.