From the comments (on regulation)

I think that I am one of the few federal bureaucrats who openly engage in the comment section here. I have worked in two different federal agencies.

At one agency, I was a rule writer. That is I worked with a team to develop regulations and then I wrote the proposed and final rules to promulgate or remove regulatory text in the code of federal regulations. Depending on how much public input the agency sought in the development phase, regulation changes could take a decade or more to do. Once the proposed regulatory language was developed, writing the proposed rule, getting the rule through the many layers of clearance at the department and then at OMB at the White House could take 2-5 years. And then comments have to be analyzed (nothing like reading thousands of comments including ones where they wished death on me and my children), a final reg text developed, the final rule written and then going through the clearance process again. A final rule could move faster if it was a political priority, but I have seen these taken up to 2 years as well.

Removing regulations requires just as much time and clearance. In order to massively deregulate, the agencies would require an increase in the state capacity for rule writing and the clearance process.

That is from Mike in VA.