Carter, who today became the longest living former president, served only four years but made moves that stuck and would shock Democrats and liberals today by ordering federal agencies to stand down.

He deregulated airlines, trucking, railroads, energy, and communications, moves that helped boost the economy, said Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., the deregulation chief at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“Carter also deserves recognition for promoting the concept of a regulatory budget — a notion now commonly associated with Republicans, but which Carter pioneered during his presidency,” Crews said in a post for Forbes.

According to former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, a Republican and legendary penny-pincher, Carter’s actions set the stage for President Ronald Reagan to challenge Washington’s swamp. “The Carter deregulation helped fuel the Reagan economic renaissance and continues to make possible the powerful innovations that remake our world,” he wrote in a birthday note about Carter for the Wall Street Journal.

Crews has been leading a campaign for widespread deregulation and used his post to highlight Carter’s success, pointing to it as a model for today’s GOP. He also noted where Carter’s efforts weren’t perfect.

“The primary lesson here is that true agency abolition is rare, and the corresponding deregulation rarer still. When Congress places departments or agencies in its crosshairs, such as the Department of Education termination being spearheaded by Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, it will need to be exceptionally diligent to ensure that the government’s reach is genuinely reduced, both in terms of spending and regulation,” Crews wrote.

“The ideal outcome when abolishing an agency is the complete disappearance of its regulations. But achieving this requires clear legislative intent and mechanisms to prevent the transfer of regulatory authority to other entities, and to follow through with privatizations or restorations of authority to states and localities to prevent the regrowth of ‘weeds,’” he added.

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Trump has promised to cut even more regulations than he did during his first presidency. He has even suggested hiring Elon Musk to help. President Joe Biden has made that possibly easy because he has ramped up the approval of agencies adding regulations, especially in green energy fields.

“Lawmakers can draw inspiration from Jimmy Carter’s legacy. To him, we say thank you, and happy birthday,” Crews wrote.