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…
Blog
Congress should stop the White House from rewriting ‘Circular A-4’
Barring an extension, next week (June 6) is the deadline for comments on the White House Office of Management and Budget’s …
Blog
Do more deregulation in debt limit deal
The internal GOP debate this week is over lower-case “d” default if a June 6 deadline for an increase in the debt limit is…
Blog
Let’s get this huge ‘hidden tax’ of regulation out into the open
Smack dab in the middle of contentious debt limit negotiations, the House Budget Committee held another in its series of hearings on American economic growth,…
Forbes
Congress Should Halt OMB’s Rewrite Of Circular A-4 Guidance On Regulatory Cost-Benefit Analysis
People love to gripe about red tape; but not only is there a method to the madness, there’s a certain madness to the method these…
Issues & Insights
Biden Unleashes The Regulatory Kraken — And There’s No Land In Sight
As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Clyde Wayne Crews put it recently, “President Biden is leading an unprecedented expansion of the administrative state. In two…
Forbes
A Congressional Regulatory Report Card Can Begin to Address Biden’s New Attempts to Downplay Regulatory Costs
The Federal Register website, portals like Regulations.gov and other online databases make it far easier than in pre-Internet times to acquire information on the assortment of federal…
Reason
Despite SCOTUS Ruling Limiting Its Authority, EPA Tries To Unilaterally Regulate Carbon Emissions Again
CEI’s Daren Bakst and Wayne Crews are cited in Reason about the EPA trying to regulate carbon emissions despite SCOTUS rule: “Biden’s new move…
Forbes
Congress Must Mobilize To Halt Biden’s Radical Administrative State Transformation
[T]he genius of the Progressives in the late 19th century was to preempt or push large sectors of the emerging future (the environment,…
News Release
Biden EO on ‘Environmental Justice’ Poses Threat to all Americans
The Biden administration today announced a new executive order purporting to “further embed environmental justice into the work of federal agencies.” CEI regulatory and…
Blog
Congress shouldn’t party like it’s 2019 on national debt
Now comes the GOP’s turn to do its own version of a “lockdown.” Republicans should heed the advice of a member of the other party, Rahm…
News Release
House Republicans Helpfully Tie Government Reforms to Debit Limit Deal
House Republican leadership yesterday released the text of their debt limit deal which trades a suspension or increase in the debt limit for a number…
News Release
Biden’s ‘Modernizing Regulatory Review’ Executive Order Will Undermine Review
President Biden yesterday issued an “Executive Order on Modernizing Regulatory Review,” by which “modernizing” apparently means undermining transparency and disclosure and pushing a radical…
Blog
Debt Limit: When You Run Out of Other People’s Money, Keep Spending Anyway
Spending and deficit control are indispensable to a the long-term economic health and stability of a nation. But today, fiscal restraint is visible only in…
Forbes
Regulatory Reform’s Role In Addressing The Debt Limit
Spring is here, the first quarter is over, and the federal debt limit is back in play. Again. The cap was last …
Washington Examiner
Sen. Mike Braun cuts path to slow Biden’s ‘noxious’ agenda
It drew applause from deregulation advocates. “Sen. Braun’s efforts to strike Biden’s regulatory excesses are vital,” said Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. of the…
Forbes
The “Guidance Out Of Darkness Act” Is The Low-Hanging Fruit Of Regulatory Reform
We often marvel that we don’t actually know how many federal agencies exist. And the number of “commissions” and programs (many expired…
News Release
Senator Ron Johnson and 15 GOP Colleagues Introduce Guidance Out of Darkness Act in 118th Congress
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act this week, a bill aimed at bringing transparency to agency guidance documents…
Forbes
Laws Against Laws: A 118th Congress Regulatory Reform Agenda For Rightsizing Washington
It’s all right to be little-bitty. — Alan Jackson, “Little Bitty,” Everything I Love, 1996 It ought to be harder to enact bad laws and regulations…
News Release
Congress Shouldn’t Compound Silicon Valley Bank Collapse with Bailouts and Bad Ideas
The Silicon Valley Bank collapse has spurred some terrible policymaking ideas in Congress, exacerbating bad decisions by the bank that has led to its collapse.
News Release
Biden Budget Amounts to Top-Down Central Planning, Lacks Needed Reforms
President Biden today unveiled his latest budget submitted to Congress. CEI experts take a dim view of the agenda of excess spending and regulation…
Forbes
Biden’s 2024 Federal Budget Proposal Extends Helicopter Government
It appears that instead of a federal fiscal budget that sticks to the basics, we are growing accustomed to an ambitious central government that doubles…
Forbes
Regulation Without Representation: A Quick Revisit Of The “Unconstitutionality Index”
Administrative agencies rather than the elected Congress do the bulk of U.S. lawmaking despite the strictures of Article I of the Constitution —…
Wall Street Journal
Biden’s Regulatory Deluge
Regulatory costs to the economy are now reckoned to be at least $2 trillion, or roughly 8% of U.S. gross domestic product in…
Forbes
A Case For The Article I Regulatory Budget Act
There is a case to be made for officially “budgeting” and capping costs of the thousands of rules and regulations that federal agencies set loose…
Washington Examiner
Republicans can use the debt ceiling fight to better prepare Americans for the next economic crisis
On the outside chance that House Republicans are able to wrangle President Joe Biden into cutting federal spending to set a new debt…
Blog
Biden’s State of the Union in Five Words: More Spending, Regulation, and Dependency
Ladies and gentlemen, we can sum up President Joe Biden’s the State of the Union (SOTU) in five words: More spending, regulation, and dependency. That…
Blog
Right Sizing the Federal Trade Commission Is Step One
As part of regulatory streamlining and administrative state reform efforts, members of the 118th Congress have already reintroduced several prominent pieces of legislation. These include…
Blog
Inventories of Federal Agency Major Rules and Regulations Poised to Rise
Federal government reports and databases on regulations serve different purposes: The Federal Register details anddepicts the aggregate number of proposed and final rules—both those that…
Blog
Agency Notices in the Federal Register Merit Close Monitoring by Congress
Along with presidential proclamations like executive orders and memoranda (examined recently here) are those of departments and agencies, which are numerous and sweeping. Without…
Blog
An Update on Biden Administration Executive Orders and Presidential Memoranda
Executive orders, presidential memoranda, “Fact Sheets,” and other executive proclamations make up a substantial component of what passes for lawmaking in the United States today.
Blog
A Rise in Unfunded Mandates on State and Local Governments Could Spur Calls for Regulatory Reform in the 118th Congress
The Biden administration’s surge in federal regulations affecting small business will likely to induce some calls for regulatory reform during the 118th Congress. Now…
Blog
332 Costliest Rules in the Fall 2022 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations
Every year, federal agencies issue thousands of rules, regulations, and guidance documents, compared to a relative handful of laws passed by Congress.
Blog
The Fall 2022 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations Extends “Whole-of-Government” Activism
The genius of the Progressives in the late 19th century was to preempt or push large sectors of the emerging future (the…
Larry Kudlow Show
RADIO: CEI’s Wayne Crews Joins The Larry Kudlow Show
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies Wayne Crews joined The Larry Kudlow Show to discuss the hidden tax of federal regulations.
News Release
CEI Regulation Expert Wayne Crews Becomes “Fred L. Smith, Jr. Fellow in Regulatory Studies”
Longtime regulation policy expert Clyde Wayne Crews is now the inaugural “Fred L. Smith, Jr. Fellow in Regulatory Studies” at the Competitive Enterprise Institute,…
News Release
White House Finally Releases “Unified Agenda” on Upcoming Regulations, Signaling a Rise in Big, Costly New Regulations
Today, at last, the White House released the fall 2022 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, where federal regulators report on what they have planned for…
Forbes
118th Congress Should Confront Biden Administration On Overdue Regulatory Cost Benefit Reports
Not later than February 5, 2001, and on the first Monday in February of each year thereafter, the President, acting through the Director of the…
forbes
118th Congress Should Confront Biden Administration On Overdue Regulatory Cost Benefit Reports
Not later than February 5, 2001, and on the first Monday in February of each year thereafter, the President, acting through the Director of the…
Blog
Where Is the Fall 2022 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions?
Federal budgets are chronically late and always unbalanced, but we do get them eventually. Increasingly, we get them good and hard, as we did…
News Release
CEI Experts View Proposed FY 2023 Omnibus as Wasteful, Ineffective Big Government Progressivism
The Senate Appropriations Committee released the text of an omnibus appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2023 early in the morning on Tuesday. CEI experts…
Blog
Biden Mocks Republicans as “Socialists;” Don’t Prove Him Right on the 2023 Omnibus
Several times in recent months, President Joe Biden mocked Republicans who had called his legislative agenda “socialist,” but afterward worked to channel some of the…
Blog
What Republicans Can Do about the Federal Budget Now
When the new 2023 fiscal year began October 1, Washington had been running a series of trillion-dollar deficits. This year’s Christmastime budget showdown, and the adventures…
Blog
New Unfunded Federal Mandates on State and Local Governments Could Spark Regulatory Reform
Substantial upticks in final and proposed regulation affecting small business beyond that seen already in the Biden administration appear likelier than not. A…
Blog
Quick Observations on NDAA in Light of the Biden “Whole-of-Government” Agenda
Across the board, the Biden administration’s policies call for agencies to “prioritize action on climate change in their policy-making and budget processes, in their…
Blog
Setting a Baseline for Proposed Rules Affecting Small Business
In what way are proposed rules affecting small business rising or falling, and should policy makers be on guard? The answer to the second part…
Blog
A Surge in Small Business Burdens May Propel Regulatory Reform
Given heavy post-COVID spending and regulation, sentiments against expanding government have not been as strong as those in favor of Washington’s growth. It remains…
Blog
This Thanksgiving Biden Pardons Poultry, Plucks Public with Spending and Regulation
Another year is flying by, and each time as I await the ever-delayed fall edition of the Unified Agenda of federal regulations I enjoy taking…
Blog
Regulation Population Update: Checking in on Code of Federal Regulations Statistics
In a recent post we noted that, while the online Federal Register database depicts 3,257 final rules for 2021, the 73,000-page Federal Register’s count actually…
Blog
The Unfairness of the FTC’s Policy Statement Regarding the Scope of Unfair Methods of Competition
The latest in a stream of regulatory dark matter is the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) November 10, 2022 “Policy Statement Regarding the Scope…
Blog
Rules and Regulations Increase 45 Percent during Biden Administration
You’ve heard plenty from this quarter on broken disclosure and transparency in the Biden administration, which eliminated the “Deregulatory” designation for rules implanted…
Reason
FBI Reports Dubious ‘Trend’ of Rideshare Driver Kidnappings
“Fund managers who handle retirement accounts through the EBSA are being told to consider climate change and other environmental, social, and governance (ESG)…
National Review
The Threat from Biden’s ‘Whole of Government’ Regulatory Approach
When the U.S. federal administrative state began its march from novelty to leviathan over a century ago, few likely imagined the tangle of rules it would…
Blog
Talking Points on Biden’s “Whole-of-Government” Regulatory Escalations
Among much else, the 2022 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments presents a $2 trillion undercount of regulatory costs and showcases the march of rulemaking…
The Hill
Biden’s ‘whole of government’ overhaul of federal agencies undermines their purpose
Blog
Ten Thousand Commandments 2022 Released
The 2022 edition of Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments report is out now. Now in its 28th year, it has its usual panoply of…
Products
Chapter 7: A Note on Notice and 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 6: Another Dimension of Regulatory Dark Matter: Over 21,000 Agency Public Notices Annually
Along with presidential proclamations are those of departments and agencies. Without actually passing a law, government can signal expectations, specify parameters for, and influence…
Products
Chapter 1: Biden’s Regulatory “Modernization” Expanding Government Affirms the Unworkability of Administrative State Rule
Where recent editions of Ten Thousand Commandments began by surveying of approaches the Trump administration took to streamline red tape as well as of Trump’s…
Products
Chapter 2: Beyond a Federal “Regulatory Budget”
Federal programs get funded either by taxes or by borrowing against a promise to repay with interest from future tax collections. When Congress spends, no…
Products
Chapter 5: The Presidential Dimension of Regulatory Dark Matter: Executive Orders and Memoranda
Executive orders, presidential memoranda, and other executive actions make up a large component of executive “lawmaking.” They merit attention from lawmakers, since they can have,…
Products
Chapter 3: What Comes after “Trillion”? The Unknowable Costs of Regulation and Intervention
The cumulative high end for costs in the three recent fiscal years is around $4.6 billion, compared to around $105 billion for the prior 10…
Products
Chapter 4: Tens of Thousands of Pages and 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…
Products
Chapter 8: Analysis of “The Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations”
“The Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions” (the Agenda) is the document in which agencies have outlined their priorities since…
Products
Chapter 10: Liberate to Stimulate
Policy makers frequently propose spending stimulus to grow or strengthen economies. That has certainly been the case during the past two years in response to…
Products
Executive Summary – Ten Thousand Commandments 2022
Download the Executive Summary as a PDF The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) February 2022 Budget and Economic Outlook, covering 2022 to 2032, shows discretionary,…
Products
Executive Summary – Ten Thousand Commandments 2022
The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) February 2022 Budget and Economic Outlook, covering 2022 to 2032, shows discretionary, entitlement, and interest spending of $6.822 trillion in…
Products
Chapter 9: Government Accountability Office Database on Regulations
The various federal reports and databases on regulations serve different purposes: The Federal Register shows the aggregate number of proposed and final rules—both those that…
Study
Ten Thousand Commandments 2022
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…
News Release
Report: Biden Upends Role of Federal Regulators to Seek Climate, Social Justice Policies
A new Competitive Enterprise Institute report documents how regulations imposed by the federal government on the private sector have radically shifted since President Biden…
Issues & Insights
Voters who think that putting Republicans in control of the House and Senate will make a big difference for the economy are in for a rude awakening. President Joe Biden has unleashed the regulatory Leviathan. Lawmakers will be hard-pressed to stop the damage.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) just this morning released its hugely valuable report called “10,000 Commandments,” which is a compendium of the regulatory state. In it,…
Issues in Insights
A Supermarket Merger Is Not A Threat To Humanity
Grocery store giants Kroger and Albertsons have announced a proposed merger, but it’s a business combination that will likely come under undue antitrust scrutiny. Before the…
News Release
Kroger Merger with Albertsons Would Allow More Competitive Pressure on Other Market Leaders
Kroger announced a deal today to merge with Albertsons, which would combine the nations’ two largest chains of grocery stores into one company. The…
Blog
Unmeasured Costs of Regulation are Accelerating under Biden
During a recent Senate hearing on the nomination to head the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—the…
Federal News Network
A snapshot of federal rule-making and its wide scope
Federal News Network cites CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews on federal rule making: Rulemaking is one of the most widespread activities in the federal government.
Blog
Questions the 118th Congress Should Ask OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee recently held a hearing on the nomination of Richard L. Revesz to be Administrator of the…
Blog
A One-Pager on an “Abuse-of-Crisis Prevention Act”
In recent months CEI has presented the case for a “Abuse of Crisis Prevention Act” to counter and prevent the political predation that continues to…
Blog
Tackling Unmeasured Government Growth Must be Prioritized in the 118th Congress
Fred L. Smith Jr., the founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, refers to the regulatory state as the least disciplined part of the federal enterprise.
Blog
The Problems with the White House Competition Council
Sometimes seemingly little things slip under the radar that have big implications. One of those this week was the third meeting of President Biden’s…
Blog
America Needs an Emergency Declaration to End All Emergency Declarations
Last night President Biden declared on 60 Minutes hat “The pandemic is over.” “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks, everybody seems to…
Blog
Many Federal Agency Rules and Guidance Documents are Still Not Properly Reported to Congress and the GAO
A 2014 white paper prepared for the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), “Congressional Review Act: Many Recent Final Rules Were Not Submitted…
Blog
Pondering the Paradox of the Paltry Proliferation of Prominent Proposed Rules in the Federal Register
Spending is up, the debt is up, and Republicans keep helping raise the debt ceiling. Armageddon does not result, we have learned. On the…
Blog
Threats to Democracy Posed by an Unleashed Administrative State
President Joe Biden’s much-covered Independence Hall remarks last week have drawn their share of praise, condemnation, and memes. Prominent was Biden’s easy deployment of…
Blog
Megaportals for Guidance Documents: Toward Emergency 2025 Legislation to Correct Biden’s “Whole-of-Government” Incursions
In preparing an August 2022 update on executive branch sub-regulatory guidance documents and memoranda (the observable tally is 107,000 but vastly more exist), a…
Blog
Federal Agency Guidance Document Inventory Tops 107,000 Entries
Federal statutes appear in the U.S. Code. Regulations, pass through the Federal Register, and come to rest in the Code of Federal Regulations. But no…
Blog
How the Inflation Reduction Act Will Expand Regulation
Ever since observers began tallying rule counts and pages in the Federal Register, detractors have complained about what poor measures such devices are. They might…
Blog
Stomping FROGs: An Updated Inventory of Biden’s Elimination of Trump-Era Final Rules on Guidance Document Procedures
Since President Obama unleashed the pen and phone, federal agency guidance documents and the confusion and abuse surrounding them has been covered extensively.
Forbes
Optimism On Administrative State Reform—With A Big Caution
There’s hopeful anticipation on the right of reforming the administrative state. In particular, many observers, pundits and policymakers take heart in …
Forbes
Framing An “Abuse-Of-Crisis Prevention Act” To Confine The Federal Government
I’ve been through a few of these. I was here at 9/11, I was here during the financial crisis in ‘08, I was here during…
Blog
294 Costliest Rules in Biden’s Spring 2022 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations
Unelected federal agencies personnel issue over 3,000 rules and regulations every year. That compares to a far lower number of laws passed…
Blog
A Breakdown of Rules in the White House’s Spring 2022 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions
Since the early 1980s, federal departments and agencies have highlighted selected regulatory priorities in spring and fall editions of the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory…
Forbes
Biden Administration Releases Updated Regulatory Agenda
Apart from a one-time Obama-era glitch, federal agencies have highlighted selected regulatory priorities in Spring and Fall editions of the …
News Release
CEI Report Proposes Legislation to Stop Future Congresses from Exploiting National Crises to Grow Government
WASHINGTON—The United States has been rocked by three major economic crises so far in the 21st century—the 9/11 terror attacks, the 2008 financial crash, and…
National Review
The Case for Letting Crises Go to Waste
If there is an iron law in politics, it’s that when crisis hits, government grows. Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, advised that politicians should…
Study
The Case for Letting Crises Go to Waste
Executive Summary An Abuse-of-Crisis Prevention Act to reaffirm boundaries of politicians and the legislation they can pass has become necessary to the survival of limited…
Forbes
Inflation And Biden’s Whole-Of-Government Price Hike
The Trump era saw countless news stories quoting unnamed officials speaking disapprovingly of their boss “on the condition of anonymity.” Because of …
Blog
Act Now! The Bipartisan Innovation Act Is a Reminder of the Urgent Need for a Bold National Elevator Plan
President Biden on numerous occasions of late has complained about the miracle that one can simply drive to a McDonald’s in rural areas and…
Blog
A Brief Outline of a Regulatory Report Card Congress Should Enact
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so. — Quote frequently attributed to Galileo, that, alas, probably was not his.If I…
Forbes
Congress Is Causing Rising Regulatory Burdens. That Needs Fixing
Mid-terms are approaching, and that means market-oriented policy groups, classical liberals, libertarians and others will resume the tradition of dusting off, polishing and updating …
Blog
How Biden’s “Building a Better America” Agenda Consolidates Permanent Federal Power
Biden’s “Building a Better America” is not about building America, but rather about spending to fatten an already overfed central government with a…