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 a nearly $2 trillion projected deficit. As usual, it came with familiar promises to cut spending—later.

Unchecked federal spending, along with the regulatory expansions it enables, has entrenched a central government that stifles economic freedom and personal liberty. Rolling it back requires more than curbing agency overreach; it demands confronting Congress’s direct role—not just in over-delegation, but in the very statutes that sustain this system.

With the CR now settled, the next battles will center on raising the debt limit and crafting a Fiscal Year 2026 spending plan—all ahead of a looming “America 250” deadline for the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to deliver its downsizing blueprint.

Spending cuts often feel like the elusive “tomorrow” that never arrives. Hoping this time is different, we stress that any meaningful effort to curb federal bloat must address both spending and regulation, with the abolition of agencies as the top priority. With that in mind, here are priorities for restoring limited government in the face of today’s challenges:

• Terminate departments and agencies: The federal government has long outgrown its constitutional bounds. Shutting down unnecessary bureaucracies—like the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and a range of others that have caught the administration’s attention—would return authority to states and local governments, curb waste, and eliminate the economic distortions caused not just by regulatory overreach but by the sheer presence of the administrative state.

• End federal subsidies and public-private partnerships: Washington has no business playing venture capitalist. Subsidies, loan guarantees, and public-private partnerships entangle the government in private-sector affairs, fueling cronyism and backdoor deals. Ending these handouts and arrangements would curb the laundering of regulation.

• Downscale federal contracting and procurement: As the world’s largest buyer, the federal government exploits its “monopsony” power to impose costly mandates and steer industries. Regulatory strings attached to procurement contracts enable federal overreach—severing these ties would weaken one of the administrative state’s most potent tools of control.

• Brace for post-Chevron progressive mobilization: With the Supreme Court weakening agency deference, progressives won’t just fold—they’ll pivot. Expect a shift toward direct legislation, expanded government partnerships, and leveraging corporate compliance to keep the regulatory machine humming. Congress must maintain vigilance, even post-Loper Bright.

• Enforce existing regulatory reform laws: Congress has already passed key transparency and oversight laws—like the Congressional Review Act and the Regulatory Right-to-Know Act—but elements of them are routinely ignored. Even without new reform legislation, congressional oversight committees stepping up to enforce these laws could make a significant difference.

• Rewrite OMB’s regulatory cost-analysis guidelines: The Biden administration rewrote cost-benefit analysis guidelines (Circular A-4) to justify more regulation. A course correction is needed. The Trump administration should revamp these guidelines to focus not on alleged market failures but on political failures—while injecting well-earned skepticism toward agency “expertise.”

• Reinforce Trump executive orders with new legislation: Shockingly enough, Trump’s regulatory rollback efforts—now four executive orders and counting—need legislative backing. Codifying these reforms and the framework they erect for DOGE and beyond would prevent future administrations from reversing them with the stroke of a pen, helping ensure long-term stability in deregulatory policy.

• Crack down on regulatory dark matter: Related to the regulatory laundering via grants and contracts, agencies can increasingly sidestep formal rulemaking by issuing guidance documents, notices, and other sub-regulatory actions. Strengthening transparency (such as by formalizing a portal for guidance documents), as well as banning and limiting the use of guidance documents would help stop the dodging of accountability.

• Implement regulatory cost budgeting: Government spending has a budget (or at least the illusion of one)—regulation should too. Capping total regulatory costs would force agencies to justify new burdens and make tradeoffs rather than treating the private sector as an unlimited regulatory dumping ground.

• Require congressional approval of regulations: No one—not even the central government—can fully tabulate the true cost of regulation. The solution? Force Congress to own up to the burdens it imposes. The REINS Act, introduced in the 119^th Congress by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), would require congressional approval for major regulations and guidance documents before they take effect—preventing lawmakers from hiding behind unelected bureaucrats (not that they don’t deserve blame too).

• Establish sunsetting and a regulatory reduction commission: Outdated and burdensome regulations stay on the books indefinitely, creating an ever-growing drag on economic growth. A mandatory expiration process and a dedicated commission to cut obsolete rules would help keep the regulatory code in check long after DOGE’s work is done. A new offering is the SCRUB (Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome) Act from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).

• Create an annual regulatory report card: Sunlight is the best disinfectant, as they say. A formalized report tracking regulatory costs, agency rulemaking activity, the ratio of new rules to repealed ones, and much more digestible factoids would inject much-needed transparency and accountability into the regulatory process.

• Consider replacing or subordinating OMB review with a Congressional Office of Regulatory Analysis (CORA): The enhanced OMB oversight established in 2025 is likely to be stronger than during Trump’s first term. However, long-term shifts in political power—like those that enabled Biden to weaken OMB review—raise concerns about its durability. Moving regulatory oversight to Congress through CORA could provide a more stable, even bipartisan check on executive overreach.

• Enact an “Abuse-of-Crisis Prevention Act”:  Even the best-laid deregulation plans can be undone by the next crisis. Washington has a history of exploiting emergencies to justify massive new spending and regulatory expansions. Establishing safeguards to prevent crisis-driven overreach—and preemptively devolving emergency powers to states and localities—would ensure the next shock doesn’t become another federal power grab and blank check for federal expansion.

Regulatory reform is essential, but without tackling Congress’s own role in the spending-regulation trap, lasting change is impossible. By curbing its interventionist habits and enacting measures like those above, lawmakers can dismantle federal overreach and lay the groundwork for lasting economic freedom.

For more see:

Free to Prosper: A Pro-Growth Agenda for the 119th Congress, Chapter 1, Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“Shutdowns are fake, but government growth is very real,” Competitive Enterprise Institute

“The Federal Spending-Regulation Trap: Here’s An Escape Plan At Last,” Forbes