Blog
What the DOGE debates really reveal
Last week I took part in a point/counterpoint on the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), making a brief case for its mission and…
Washington Examiner
Republicans ‘reimagine’ major regulatory reform to fit it in reconciliation bill
Washington examiner cited CEI’s expert on reform Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner that this would give Congress…
Blog
Commencing deconstruction of the administrative state – Trump’s next 100 days
Federal regulation costs trillions of dollars each year. Call it the “costberg”—a vast, submerged amalgam of rules, guidance, and paperwork reshaping the economy without a…
930AM The Answer
Federal regulations cost average American household $16,000 a year, group finds
930AM The Answer cited CEI’s Ten Thousand Commandments report The nonpartisan Competitive Enterprise Institute released its annual Ten Thousand Commandments report Thursday. It shows that total…
Issues & Insights
Can Trump Kill This $2.2 Trillion Regulatory Beast?
Issues and Insights quoted CEI’s Ten Thousand Commandments report But that barely scratches the surface. Thursday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released its annual “10,000 Commandments”…
NewsMax
Study: Biden’s ‘Hidden’ Tax on Households Hit $16K in 2024
NewsMax quoted CEI’s expert on Ten Thousand Commandments report Federal regulations imposed by the Biden administration reached costs of $2.16 trillion in 2024, generating a…
The Washington Times
Federal red ink now costs businesses more than $2.1 trillion per year, report says
The Washington Times quoted CEI’s expert on 10kc report “Congress should be held accountable for such large regulatory actions,” wrote Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., the…
Daily Caller
Cost Of Regulatory Burdens Reached Staggering Levels In 2024, Report Says
Daily Caller cited CEI’s expert on Ten Thousand Commandments report Federal regulations added an estimated total cost of a whopping $2.155 trillion for Americans in…
The National News Desk
Biden leaves behind $16,000 hidden tax for everyone
The National News Desk quoted CEI’s expert on Ten Thousand Commandments report That according to a new report released Thursday from The Competitive…
News Release
“Ten Thousand Commandments” report on federal regulatory burdens identifies problems, reforms
The Competitive Enterprise Institute today released its annual Ten Thousand Commandments report on the cost burden of federal regulations, revealing a cost exceeding $2 trillion,…
Products
Chapter 11: 2025 Unconstitutionality Index: 19 rules for every law 78
Article I of the Constitution notwithstanding, administrative agencies, not Congress, do most of America’s lawmaking. Congress enacts weighty legislation but delegates the details to agencies.
Products
Chapter 4: Regulatory dark matter
Although executive actions are typically supposed to deal with the internal operations of the federal government, they increasingly can have binding effect and influence private…
Products
Chapter 3: Numbers of rules and page counts in the Federal Register
The Federal Register is the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations. Although its page counts are often cited as a…
Products
Chapter 2: Why we need a regulatory budget
The federal government publicly discloses its fiscal costs. It does not disclose most of its regulatory costs. Federal spending programs are funded either by taxes…
Products
Chapter 7:Unified Agenda of regulatory actions
Along with the Report to Congress, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations, another vehicle for regulatory disclosure is the spring and fall editions of…
Products
Chapter 12: An agenda for rightsizing Washington
Rule counts regularly topped 4,000 in the 1990s. That is the wrong comparison for Biden-era lower rule counts. Those fewer rules have higher costs, are…
Products
Chapter 5: Well over 20,000 agency public notices annually
Presidents issue a few dozen memoranda and other proclamations each year. Departments and agencies issue thousands. These include guidance documents, notices, memoranda, letters, bulletins, action…
Products
Chapter 6: A note on rule reviews at OMB
OMB’s Biden-era shift to regulatory advocacy, particularly since the Circular A-4 rewrite, diminishes what can be gleaned from EO 12866 rule reviews. Nonetheless, like pages…
Products
Chapter 1: Biden’s whole-of-government push
Let’s be clear, Kamala and I came into office determined to transform how the economy works—change the way it literally functions. —Joe Biden, September 23,…
Products
Chapter 8: Federal regulations affecting small business
The aforementioned National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) report found that average annual per-employee regulatory costs to firms vary by firm size. The smaller the firm,…
Products
Chapter 10: GAO database on rules and major rules
The federal government’s regulatory reports and databases serve different purposes. The Federal Register presents all proposed and final rules, along with numerous presidential documents and…
Products
Chapter 9: Federal rules affecting state and local governments
State and local officials’ concerns over federal mandates’ overriding their own priorities resulted in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) of 1995. It requires Congressional…
Study
Ten Thousand Commandments 2025
Introduction Record federal debt is contributing to record-setting regulatory burdens. While new spending programs show up in budget figures, new regulations requiring the private sector…
Blog
Earth Day is broken—only private conservation can fix it
With this week’s 2025 Earth Day came the usual media and progressive lawmaker fanfare lauding government programs and regulatory solutions to environmental concerns. But…
Blog
Don’t let the next crisis grow the government—again
“Now, I’m going to sign this, and it’s a great honor — $6.2 trillion. I’ve never signed anything with a “T”…
Forbes
Trump Reforms Die Without An Abuse-Of-Crisis Prevention Act
Amid frustrations with interventionist elements of the Trump agenda—such as tariffs and revived antitrust zeal—many have nevertheless been encouraged by the renewed…
Blog
The executive order that could kill trillion-dollar bailouts
The federal government doesn’t just spend—it also regulates through spending. That’s one reason crises so often inflate Washington’s role in American life. But as I…
News Release
President Trump announces Executive Orders aimed at slashing overregulation within federal agencies: CEI analysis
On Wednesday, President Trump announced several Executive Orders aimed at slashing overregulation in federal agencies through sunsetting and repealing outdated or unnecessary rules. The Orders…
WSJ Opinion
The Kid Rock-Kamala Coalition
WSJ Opinion cited CEI’s expert on the U.S. economy Now the White House is attacking secondary markets? Perhaps soon someone will have to explain…
Forbes
Trump’s Deregulation Gains Muscle—But Is He Skipping Leg Day?
The Trump 2.0 era has been marked by some extraordinary executive orders aimed at deregulation. These include E.O.14,192’s one-in, ten-out initiative; E.O. 14219’s installation of DOGE…
Blog
Trump’s deregulation push: Several steps forward—and some sideways
As I cover in a new column at Forbes, Trump 2.0 has brought a flurry of executive orders aimed at deregulation—one-in, ten-out rules,…
CPAC
Regulatory Tyranny, Congressional Abdication—and the Push to Take It All Back
Letters
CEI joins State Policy Network in coalition letter on Executive Order Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation
CPAC
CPAC 2025 and Beyond: A Roadmap to Lasting Regulatory Reform
CPAC has CEI’s expert speak on a panel about regulatory reform On Friday, February 21st, 2025, attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)…
Blog
Let the deconstruction commence
Congress’s actionable hierarchy for administrative state burial & constitutional resurrection Alongside restoring fiscal sanity, Congress must establish a hierarchy of actions to make Donald Trump’s…
Blog
14 priorities in slashing spending and regulation before ‘America 250’—#7 will shock you!
This past week, the House and Senate passed a continuing resolution (CR) that preserves Biden-era spending levels while largely turning a blind eye to…
Blog
Shutdowns are fake, but government growth is very real
With a government funding deadline looming on March 14, the House passed a continuing resolution (CR) to freeze non-defense spending at Fiscal Year 2024…
Op-Eds
Will Congress Ever Take The Libertarian Win And Embrace Automatic Shutdown?
Congress is at it again. With the March 14, 2025, funding deadline looming, the House is debating a continuing resolution (CR) that would…
News Release
Trump’s speech to Congress spotlights deregulatory efforts: CEI analysis
On Tuesday evening, President Trump delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress where he highlighted his administration’s deregulatory efforts across the federal government.
Blog
DOGE’s first cut at bureaucracy: A target inventory
Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14219, “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Regulatory Initiative,” has set the stage for a major…
Blog
The FROGs are back: Will White House hop to it on guidance documents?
Donald Trump’s 2019’s Executive Order 13891, “Promoting the Rule of Law through Improved Agency Guidance Documents,” established online portals and inventories at…
Blog
The SCRUB Act: Washing away Washington’s regulatory grime
The Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (SCRUB) Act, introduced today by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), is a key step …
Joni Ernst
Ernst Makes President Trump’s Executive Action on Deregulation Permanent
Joni Ernst cited CEI’s expert on the SCRUB Act “The SCRUB Act and its Regulatory Cut-Go procedures mirror the new 10-for-one Trump architecture by requiring reduction that…
Blog
Trump executive order puts independent agencies on a leash
President Trump’s new executive order, “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” marks a major shift in regulatory oversight by bringing independent agencies…
News Release
CEI applauds Sen. Ernst’s (R-IA) SCRUB Act
On Friday, U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) introduced the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (SCRUB) Act, which would task President…
Blog
Goodbye to the roaring twenties of regulation? A cost roundup
The final Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations from the Biden administration appeared January 15. Here at the middle…
Dr. Rand Paul
Dr. Rand Paul Introduces REINS Act to Put Power Back in the People’s Hands
Blog
Zero to prosperity? New Trump executive order is a good start
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought a wave of executive orders, including his new “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation” directive. Building on…
Daily Caller
It’ll Take More Than EOs For Trump’s Admin To Totally Slay Biden’s Mammoth ‘Whole-Of-Government’ Policy Push
Blog
A game-changing Trump executive order could nuke regulatory dark matter
In the wake of Donald Trump’s flurry of executive actions—including implementing a regulatory freeze, eradicating Biden’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and staffing, and…