Blog
Subsidy-free capitalism may require a constitutional amendment
Automobiles, electrification, ample consumer goods and mass marketing, a construction boom, and access to credit helped fuel the Roaring Twenties of a century ago.
Blog
The vital role of private conservation: A different perspective on Earth Day
Amidst the jubilation over government-led environmental initiatives on yet another Earth Day yesterday, it’s crucial to highlight a perspective too often overlooked: private conservation, rather…
Blog
The eventual federal regulatory budget has bipartisan roots
With apologies to Margaret Thatcher, I’ll often joke that when the federal government runs out of other people’s money, it keeps spending anyway. The Congressional…
Letters
CEI Coalition Letter in Support of the Renewing Efficiency in Government by Budgeting Act
Blog
New lunar time zones reinforce importance of keeping regulators earthbound
Maybe when actually applied to the blackness of space, regulatory dark matter can be a good thing. Joe Biden this week directed NASA to collaborate…
Blog
This model AI legislation would regulate government instead of the private sector
Brand new guidance from the Office of Management and Budget governing uses of artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the federal government was issued last week.
Forbes
Model Legislation On Artificial Intelligence To Regulate Government, Not Big Tech
While there’s considerable chatter, Congress seems unlikely to enact legislation regulating artificial intelligence (AI) this election year. The wait can be worth it, though. There…
Forbes
Libertarian Victory: You Mean We Can Shut Down Government Without Even Passing A Law?
It is happening again. Congress will enact another bloated, pork-laden and largely unread omnibus spending bill to complete formal appropriations for the 2024 fiscal year…
E & E News
Murky deadline looms for Biden’s regs
CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews is cited in E & E News on a murkey deadline for Biden regulations: The Biden administration “might not be so…
Blog
Classifying regulations is now more confusing thanks to Biden administration
Joe Biden’s Modernizing Regulatory Review executive order (E.O. 14094) raised the threshold for a “significant regulatory action” from $100 million to $200 million in…
News Release
SCOTUS Hears Troubling Jawboning Cases Involving Big Tech and Government
Today, the Supreme Court heard argument concerning jawboning – government pressuring private entities like social media companies to suppress politically disfavored speech. CEI expert Wayne…
Wall Street Journal
Where the Cheering Stopped
CEI’s Wayne Crews is cited in The Wall Street Journal on the State of the Union address: Budgets Are About PrioritiesWayne Crews writes for the Competitive…
Blog
One great moment in the budget battles: GOP’s ‘Policy Statement on Deregulation’
Today marks the release of the White House’s $7.3 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2025, even as policymakers continue their wrangling over the…
Blog
SOTU 2024: Unparalleled spending, regulation, and dependency
In bumper-sticker fashion, we have fondly summed up Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union Addresses (SOTU) as appeals for more spending, regulation and…
Blog
Where do regulations go when Congress shutters an agency?
The way the federal government spends money rarely changes until a crisis comes along. Arguably, we’re already there with federal debt service (interest) payments…
Blog
Worried about massive federal debt? Time to right-size the regulators
In the annals of federal bloat, a milestone is looming as noted in another post last week: 2024 interest payments on America’s $34 trillion…
Forbes
The GAO Weighs In On Regulatory Reform Options For Congress
The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) December 2023 Options for Enhancing Congressional Oversight of Rulemaking and Establishing an Office of Legal Counsel ought not be overlooked by Congress,…
Blog
Today’s federal spending makes the Louisiana Purchase look like pocket change
The week of Presidents’ Day 2024 comes at a lull before contentious budget battles resume in early March. It is thus an opportune moment…
Forbes
Spiraling Debt Demands Bipartisan Mobilization To Terminate Federal Departments And Agencies
In a federal government seemingly incapable of sticking to the necessary and proper, 2024 interest payments on debt topping $34 trillion are set to surpass defense spending as well as Medicare…
Blog
Red tape? More like chains, thanks to deficit spending and subsidies
Federal subsidies and grants are infamous for having strings attached. That’s nothing new, but those strings are increasingly chains. Businesses are being seduced into corporate…
Blog
Attention regulators: Be on the lookout for the ALERT Act
It has been almost a quarter-century since the federal government performed an assessment of the aggregate costs of regulation of regulatory intervention. Late last year,…
News Release
House Oversight and Accountability Committee advances pro-transparency ALERT Act
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee today advanced H.R. 262, the All Economic Regulations are Transparent (ALERT) Act sponsored by Rep. Bob Good (R-VA).
Blog
Use the Congressional Review Act to strike rules not reported to Congress and GAO
Significant attention is likely to turn to Joe Biden’s ambitious regulatory agenda before summertime. That’s because rules the administration finalizes “late”—during the last 60 in-session…
Blog
Congress could revoke many costly Biden admin rules with Congressional Review Act. Here’s a list!
Until April of 2023, a federal rule costing $100 million was considered “economically significant.” Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14094 (Modernizing Regulatory Review) raised that…
Blog
Unconstitutionality Index going into 2024: 46 rules for every law
The Biden’s administration’s 3,018 rules and regulations of 2023 is fairly typical of agency output these days. But while rule counts remain relatively stable,…
Washington Examiner
Swamp dishes most regulations in nearly three decades
CEI’s Wayne Crews is cited in the Washington Examiner about an uptick in regulations out of Washington D.C.: “The upshot here is that 46…
Blog
Federal Register 2023 gives Congress 90,402 reasons to restrain the regulators
As we bid farewell to 2023 and ring in 2024, the Federal Register reveals a noteworthy chapter in regulatory history under the Joe Biden administration.
Blog
American small businesses are paying through the roof for regulations
In a new column at Forbes, I take look at the National Association of Manufacturers’ (NAM) update of its …
Washington Examiner
Swamp’s hidden regulations cost $50,000 per employee, lost investment
CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews is cited on Washington Examiner about hidden regulation cost: “The choices made 100 years ago in creating and erecting the administrative…
E&E
Want to talk rules? The White House just made it easier.
Wayne Crews is cited on E&E about government rule making: Wayne Crews, a fellow in regulatory studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think…
IREF Europe
“THE TEN THOUSAND COMMANDMENTS” AND THE COST OF NORMATIVE INFLATION
Blog
Biden’s yearly Federal Register second-highest page count ever, could still score number one
The Federal Register is the daily depository of rules and regulations. Today, the count stood at 86,256 pages, with three weeks to go for Joe…
Blog
Federal government waves goodbye to ‘economically significant’ regulations
Last week, the Fall 2023 edition of the White House’s Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions appeared. It features the…
Forbes
Biden Releases Fall 2023 Unified Agenda Of Federal Regulations
Since the early 1980s, federal departments and agencies have highlighted rulemaking priorities (not a complete inventory) in the (mostly) twice-yearly …
News Release
Biden’s Unified Agenda report on regulations has two main problems
On December 6, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at last released its regulatory blueprint for the coming year, the fall…
American Radio Journal
Wayne Crews with Ten Thousand Commandments
CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews joins the American Radio Journal to discuss Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State. Listen to…
Sound Cloud
Wayne Crews Are Federal Regulations Costing Taxpayers And Companies Almost $2 Trillion Per Year
The Lars Larson Show is joined by CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews on November 30th, 2023.
The Daily Signal
EXCLUSIVE: Here’s How Much Regulations Cost Average American Family—and How Biden Is Making It Worse
“American households pay at least $14,000 in hidden regulatory costs every year,” Wayne Crews, the Fred L. Smith fellow in regulatory studies at the institute,…
Washington Times
Biden’s battle on climate and social programs escalates red tape
Rules on everything from new safety measures for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic to new standards for grades of canned baked beans have…
News Release
Report: Federal regulatory burden undermines economy, financial security
A new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute tallies the huge and growing cost federal regulations impose on American businesses and families – $1.939…
Products
Chapter 5: Page Counts and Numbers of Rules in the Federal Register
The Federal Register is the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations. Although its number of pages is often cited as…
Products
Chapter 3: Getting Beyond a Federal Regulatory Budget and the Limitations of Administrative Reform
Federal programs are funded either by taxes or by borrowing, with interest, from future tax collections. When Congress spends, no one questions that disclosure…
Products
Chapter 6: The Expanding Code of Federal Regulations
The page count in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), where the Register’s rules come to rest in small print, is not as dramatic…
Products
Chapter 9: A Note on Rule Reviews at OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Tracking the effects of rules and regulations, executive orders, memoranda, and regulatory guidance is vital. These alternative regulatory actions have become powerful means of working…
Products
Chapter 13: Federal Regulations Affecting State and Local Governments
Ten Thousand Commandments primarily emphasizes federal regulations imposed on the private sector. However, state and local officials’ complaints over federal mandates’ overriding their own…
Products
Chapter 10: Analysis of “The Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions”
“The Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions” (the Unified Agenda) is the document in which agencies have outlined regulatory priorities…
Products
Chapter 8: Another Dimension of Regulatory Dark Matter: Over 22,000 Agency Public Notices Annually
Along with presidential proclamations are those of departments and agencies. These are numerous and sweeping. Through various kinds of guidance documents, notices, and policy statements,…
Products
Chapter 15: Regulation without Representation: The “Unconstitutionality Index”—13 Rules for Every Law
Administrative agencies, not Congress, do most U.S. lawmaking, despite Article I of the Constitution stipulating otherwise. Congress is to blame here, as it routinely enacts…
Products
Chapter 4: The Unknowable Costs of Regulation and Intervention and a $1.939 Trillion Estimate
The federal government undertakes little review of federal regulation to ensure that regulations individually do more good than bad each year, and it performs no…
Products
Executive Summary – Ten Thousand Commandments 2023
The cost of government extends well beyond what Washington taxes. Federal regulations add another $1.939 trillion to Americans’ annual burden. Federal environmental, safety and health,…
Products
Chapter 2: Competition Policy That Exiles Competitive Enterprise Harms Equity
Biden has repeatedly claimed, “I’m a capitalist.” He also rightly says that capitalism without competition is “exploitation.” However the top-down vision Biden promotes, which is…
Products
Chapter 11: Notable Rules and Rulemakings by Agency
In recent Unified Agenda editions and in other venues, federal agencies have noted the regulatory initiatives listed below, among many others pending or recently completed.
Products
Chapter 14: Government Accountability Office Database on Regulations
The federal government’s reports and databases on regulations serve different purposes: The Federal Register details and depicts the aggregate number of proposed and final rules—both…
Products
Chapter 16: Liberate to Stimulate: Framing an Agenda for Rightsizing Washington
It should be hard to enact bad law and regulation, not to get rid of them. A whole-of-government spending and regulatory agenda like the one…
Products
Chapter 12: Federal Regulations Affecting Small Business
Given discrepancies seen in the final rule counts, the overall counts of both small business rules and significant small business rules could also be understated.
Study
Ten Thousand Commandments 2023
View Full Report Here Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the size, scope, and cost of federal regulations, and…
Products
Chapter 7: The Presidential Dimension of Regulatory Dark Matter: Executive Orders and Memoranda
Executive orders, presidential memoranda, presidential directives, ersatz fact sheets of recent administrations, and other executive proclamations make up a substantial component of what has replaced…
Blog
Slice the regulatory turkey this Thanksgiving
The turkeys Liberty and Bell just received a Thanksgiving pardon from Joe Biden. The official presentation of a turkey for a presidential pardon and rescue…
Blog
Vehicle kill switches and other horrible things Washington is doing to us from a distance
The remote kill switch for automobiles authorized by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in 2021 is a prime…
Blog
White House report reveals tens of billions in new annual regulatory costs
A consolidated Draft Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations hit the shelves at the end of October, catching…
News Release
CEI supports Rep. Foxx’s amendment to halt OMB’s A-4 rewrite
The House of Representatives will soon consider an amendment from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) to the 2024 Financial Services and General Government spending bill…
Forbes
Congress Must Halt The Ascendance Of Regulation By Subsidy
Excessive regulation is one of those perennial Washington issues, which makes sense given that Washington pops out new rules like chocolate bunnies. A …
News Release
Biden executive order on artificial intelligence will be a problem: CEI analysis
President Biden is reportedly poised to sign an executive order aimed at monitoring artificial intelligence technology and moving toward new regulations for AI. CEI experts expressed…
Forbes
Net Neutrality Resurfaces To Join The Bidenomics Regulatory Costberg
“It was always about government control.” —Commissioner Brendan Carr, Federal Communications Commission Open Meeting, October 2023 Just in time for Halloween, “net neutrality”…
Citation
Red tape burden surges to 10.34 billion hours, 15,000 lifetimes
In his new report on red tape, Clyde Wayne Crews, the regulatory expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the bulk of…
Blog
Biden admin wants to sweep independent agency regulation costs under the rug. Congress should say no.
When Congress gets around to streamlining federal regulations and forcing disclosure of their costs, exposés of the paperwork inflicted on the economy by independent…
Forbes
A New Shot At Enlisting The Office Of Management And Budget In Regulatory Streamlining
Congressional leadership on regulatory streamlining is more urgent than ever in the wake of a post-Covid legislative flurry and attendant regulatory pressures soon to be…
Real Clear Markets
Barbie, Hot Wheels, and the Market for Lemons
The Barbie movie is more than a bit of good fun. It also teaches an economics lesson about lemons—the old slang term for defective goods, not the…
Blog
Net neutrality is political predation
It’s fitting that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chose to dig up the net neutrality corpse just before Halloween. Now, our elected representatives need to…
News Release
FCC move to reinstate heavy-handed Net Neutrality regulations risks health of telecommunications infrastructure
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced her intention to re-instate so-called Net Neutrality rules that were repealed in 2018. The FCC issued the…
Forbes
Federal Paperwork Hours Consume The Equivalent Of 14,883 Human Lifetimes Annually
The White House Office of Management and Budget has this year issued catch-up editions of Information Collection Budget of the United States Government, a task in…
Blog
What’s wrong with Bidenomics?
Yesterday, I pointed out that in the looming threat of a government shutdown, President Joe Biden is aiming to cement as his legacy something that…
Blog
Congress can say no to Bidenomics in shutdown showdown
The contentious fiscal year 2024 budget battle, which might result in a partial federal government shutdown, is unfurling precisely as the national debt is…
Forbes
Regulatory Reforms Belong In The FY2024 Budget Deal
Certain regulatory reforms with deep bipartisan endorsement should be incorporated into contentious fiscal budget agreements, particularly when spending cuts are difficult (which is always). We’re…
Blog
Under Biden, thousands of government guidance documents are becoming much harder to find
Laws passed by Congress get cataloged in the U.S. Code, while rules and regulations that incubate in the daily Federal Register land in the…
Forbes
Once-Promising Guidance Document Disclosures Are Stagnating Under Biden: Inventory and Observations
Laws passed by Congress are archived by subject matter in the U.S. Code. The rules and regulations that incubate in the daily Federal…
Blog
Why Congress needs to care about Biden’s ‘Circular A-4’ subterfuge
Proposed changes in the American government’s executive regulatory functions showcase a conflict of visions over separation of powers; over executive overreach; over the size and…
Washington Examiner
Resistance grows to Biden hiding costly, choking regulations
Washington Examiner cites Clyde Wayne Crews on costly regulations: Two proposed changes have been singled out by groups including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and former…
Forbes
Congress Should Confront Significant Rules And Regulations Obscured By “Bidenomics”
This past week, the number of rules and regulations in the 2023 Federal Register crossed the 2,000 mark. At 59,438 pages today, the tally will top 60,000…
Blog
‘Economically significant’ regulations: an obituary
I never thought I’d miss “economically significant” rules and regulations. But Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14094 (“Modernizing Regulatory Review”) has redefined “Significant regulatory action.”…
Forbes
Beware: The Biden Administration Refers To “Economically Significant” Regulations In The Past Tense
The past few days have brought renewed attention to Biden’s Executive Order 14,094 on “Modernizing…
Washington Examiner
Industry groups fear new Biden regulatory changes could hobble growth
Washington Examiner cites CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews economic growth hindrance: Even under the current $100 million threshold, the Biden administration has released a torrent…
Blog
Inflation Reduction Act turns one, and wow that’s an ugly baby
As President Joe Biden celebrates the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act (here’s the White House “Fact Sheet“) we…
Wall Street Journal
Regulators Gone Wild
Wall Street Journal cites CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews on overabundance of regulation: According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Clyde Wayne Crews, the Biden Administration has 297…
Blog
Don’t regulate AI. Defund it.
Just yesterday, Smart Home speakers were infuriating us with their confused and stubborn responses to simple questions. These days, the ascent of something closer to…
Blog
GOOD Act only first step in forcing federal agencies to come clean on guidance documents
Alongside the familiar profusion of notice-and-comment regulations, federal agency guidance can include memoranda, notices, bulletins, directives, news releases, letters; even blog posts and…
Forbes
Careful: Misbegotten Government-Business “Blueprints” Can Lobotomize Artificial Intelligence
Atop numerous directives and another of Washington’s periodic “Bill of Rights” proclamations misconstruing who is protected from what by such documents,…
Forbes
Biden’s Competition Council Targets Free Enterprise, Expands Government
Joe Biden’s Competition Council, created by his executive order dubbed “Promoting Competition In the American Economy,” celebrated its second anniversary and convened its …
Letters
Letter of Support on the Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act and the POST IT Act
News Release
House Oversight and Accountability Committee unanimously advances regulatory reform legislation
Earlier today, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee advanced 41 to 0 the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act from Rep. James Comer (R-KY).
Letters
Letter of Support on H.R. 890 and H.R. 3230
Blog
Bidenomics? Here are the 297 costliest rules in the president’s Spring 2023 Unified Agenda
Federal agencies issue thousands of rules, regulations and guidance documents every year compared to the relative handful of laws enacted by Congress.
Comment
OMB’s Problematic Circular A-4 Rewrite
OUTLINE Discard the pro-regulatory bias of the federal government Restore regulatory streamlining prior to Circular A-4 rewrite Restore the $100 million threshold for regulation…
Forbes
Biden’s Top-Down Economy, Powered By Executive Action
Joe Biden didn’t take a Juneteenth break, instead heading to Palo Alto to tout “historic action to combat the climate crisis,…
Blog
Is Biden admin disappearing a red flag for costly regulations?
Is the Biden administration trying to do away with the category of “economically significant” regulations altogether? Before this administration, an “economically significant” regulation was one…
News Release
House passes sensible regulatory reform bills to shrink power of the administrative state
Earlier today, the House passed 220 to 211 the Separation of Powers Restoration Act (SOPRA) sponsored by Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI).
Blog
New Biden White House Agenda shows 3,666 rules in regulatory pipeline
The Spring 2023 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions has been released. A fall version of this twice-yearly document will also contain a…
Blog
Time to shine more light on regulators’ ‘shadow boxes’
Accompanying presidential executive orders and memoranda are the numerous sub-regulatory proclamations of departments and agencies we like to call “regulatory dark matter.” Occasionally we…
Blog
Rising small business regs may spur Senate to pass REINS Act
In a bid to restore congressional accountability over the regulatory enterprise, the 118th Congress this week is set to vote on the so-called REINS Act,…
Blog
Biden administration keeps making it harder to track government ‘guidance’ documents
Federal government “guidance documents” consist of agency memoranda, bulletins, circulars, administrative interpretations, letters, manuals, and so much more. These are not supposed to be regulatory…