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…
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.
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.
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…
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…
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…