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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The DHS “Disinformation Governance Board” Needs to Be Dismantled
In recent months, an escalation of various forms of federal surveillance has become apparent. That’s bad enough, but the trend is rendered more problematic…
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Biden’s Escalating Fusion of Regulation and Censorship Requires Decisive Pushback
President Joe Biden’s “whole of government” advancement of numerous elements of an-interventionist “Building a Better America” agenda is accompanied by an alarming level…
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Escalation of Surveillance Threatens Right to Anonymity
The Biden administration has pressured big tech social media platforms to advance its policies in areas like cultural debates, climate interventions, and to stifle dissent…
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Addressing Forever Crises
It does not suffice for this administration to attribute record 8.5 percent inflation to “Putin’s price hike.” We have endured not just…
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An Emergency Law to Extinguish Regulatory Dark Matter
Many of us are pondering when things will return to normal. The short response is: never. …. Nothing will ever return to…
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Getting Things Undone: Lessons from the Obliteration of Trump’s One-In, Two-Out Campaign
‘Tis the season. As midterms approach, we’re seeing “agendas” emerge from aspirational conservatives nominally opposed to Biden’s transformation of the United States. These anti-progressive inventories…
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Edward Scissorhands and Federal Regulatory Disclosure
Recently, President Joe Biden proclaimed before the Business Roundtable’s CEO Quarterly Meeting on March 21 that there’s “going to be new world order”…
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Biden’s Whole-of-Government Equity Agenda Precludes Limited Government
A 1977 Reason magazine review of Friedrich Hayek’s “Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Vol. 2) noted Hayek’s contention “that the prime public concern should be,…
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Biden’s Repudiation of Trump’s Regulatory Streamlining Agenda: An Inventory
The explicit pro-regulatory shift by the Biden White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has entailed abandonment not merely of Trump’s…
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One Nation, Ungovernable? The Bipolar Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations
As we lurch from crisis to crisis, it is interesting to compare the way one administration’s philosophy of government response to both shock and normalcy…
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Biden’s State of the Union “Trillions Down” on Big Government Mistakes
Ladies and Gentlemen, the State of the Union is that of far more government control over the nation’s economy in years. The years following 2022…
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Joe Biden and Merrick Garland Promise New Regulation in Agriculture and other Sectors
After stepping off into the snow upon arrival Monday, January 3, President Joe Biden headed back to the White House, where his first action of…
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Biden’s Fall 2021 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulation Heralds Abandonment of Regulatory Oversight Role
The Biden administration has just released the Fall 2021 edition of the twice-yearly Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.
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An Inaccurate Update on OMB’s Inaccurately Reported Costs of Federal Regulation
Here inside the Beltway we are now in fiscal year 2022. In anticipation of the next edition of the chronically late “annual” Report to Congress…
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How to Prepare for Administrative State Reform While Stuck in a Progressive Ditch
Would-be regulatory reformers find themselves in a ditch during the Biden administration, which regards Trump deregulatory efforts as “harmful” and overturned reform-related executive orders…
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Federal Agency “Significant” Rulemakings Return to Bush-Obama Heights
While agencies are on track to issue about the same number of rules as they did last year, the number of “significant” rules among…
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The Radicalism of “Build Back Better” Is the Crisis that Classical Liberals Must Not Let Go to Waste
If the mantra of the day is, “Never let crisis go to waste,” then what are we to do when artificial crisis is being created…
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Why Government Infrastructure Spending Crowds Out Private Investment and Innovation
Those proclaiming of the Senate infrastructure bill that none of the spending is needed are correct. In embracing this gigantic spending bill, Republicans have helped preclude the…
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Enshrining Cronyism
If you like your cronyism, you can keep it. For that matter, if you like your income inequality, you can keep that too. Highly reminiscent…
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Biden’s Spring 2021 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulation, by the Numbers
The Biden administration released the Spring 2021 edition of the twice-yearly Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions today. The purpose…
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Stimulating the COVID Recovery without Trillions in Spending
Over at Inside Sources, I make the case that deregulation, freer trade, and continued vaccinations will do more to open up the economy than…
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Why Republicans Should Abandon the Infrastructure Compromise with the White House
The GOP should go nowhere near any trillion-dollar infrastructure deal with the White House. Reasons include the already enacted stratospheric COVID spending that couldn’t…
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Biden’s $6 Trillion Budget Should Warn Republicans to Drop Infrastructure Compromise
The release of the Biden $6 trillion, biggest-ever and latest-in-a-century fiscal year 2022 budget proposal is a good time to reflect upon…
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The Endless Frontier Act to Boost Science and Tech Can Mean Endless Regulation
Related to regulatory effects of mass spending on national plans and the deadweight costs of spending, are the distortions, diversion of resources, and…
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EPA Follows Through on Biden Directive to Hide Guidance Documents from the Public
Before President Joe Biden signed an executive order called Revocation of Certain Executive Orders Concerning Federal Regulation that, among much else, instructed federal agencies…
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Universal Basic Income and the Custodial Administrative State
The American Families Plan (EFP), touted both before and during President Biden’s address to Congress, is still a work in progress, with…
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Runaway Spending and Regulation Call for an Abuse-of-Crisis Prevention Act
The escalation of spending and regulation in the face of economic shock—by means of “resets,” “New New Deals,” “new social contracts,” and “Build…
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Federal Agencies Begin Process of Removing Guidance Document Portals
By the end of the Trump administration, several dozen federal agencies had issued final rules clarifying their use of sub-regulatory guidance documents. In one of…
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In Blow to Disclosure, Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations Database Removes “Deregulatory” Designation
In a setback to transparency alongside Joe Biden’s program to eliminate the disclosure of guidance documents via portals on agency websites, the Unified…
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Leveraging the Congressional Review Act to Shield Rather than Discipline Regulation
While the Congressional Review Act (CRA) was strongly bipartisan when it passed in 1996, supported by then-Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and others…
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Why Biden Cannot Simply Revoke Trump’s Executive Order 13891 Requiring the Discipline of Guidance Documents
President Joe Biden’s progressive agenda shapers have prepped dozens of executive orders for him to autograph during his first few days in office. Prominent among…
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A Look at “Modernizing Regulatory Review”
The Biden “Modernizing Regulatory Review” plan is about gutting the restraint of the past four years, and if you read statements from the proponents of…
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The Danger in Blurring the Private and Public Boundaries with Government Regulation
The recent decisions of many technology companies to remove users and customers from their platforms have deeply divided Americans. Many Americans feel censored and discriminated…
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Trump’s 2020 Unified Agenda on Regulation: An Update on One-in, Two-out
As just explored at Forbes, the Trump administration in early December released the fall 2020 edition of the twice-yearly …
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White House’s 261 Big Rules in the Pipeline Herald More Regulation than Deregulation
No matter the presidential administration, federal agencies issue thousands of rules and regulations every year, compared to a relative handful of laws passed by Congress.
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Executive Order 13,891 Sub-Regulatory Guidance Document Portal Tops 70,000 Entries
Congress makes laws. Agencies make rules, but they also issue guidance documents in heretofore unknown quantity. The year 2019 brought Executive Order 13891 (“Promoting the…
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America’s “Unconstitutional Slop” Predates Trump’s Executive Actions on Pandemic Economic Relief
The logic of the administrative state dictates the expansion of itself in response to any crisis. Executive actions play a game rigged against limited government.
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When Spending Is Regulation: The Grand Unification Theory of Government Growth
Alongside helplessness in the face of a looming $27 trillion debt, debating administrative state policy hasn’t been much help in forestalling federal government growth.
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An Executive Order 13,891 Guidance Document Portal Update: Another Lap to Go
President Donald Trump’s October 9, 2019 Executive Order 13,891 (E.O. 13,891) and a subsequent White House Office of Management directive to amplify and clarify it…
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Trump Administration Celebrates Red Tape Reduction, Promising More
The White House hosted a midsummer celebration on the South Lawn of the Trump administration’s reforms and reductions of unneeded “job killing regulations” and red…
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The E.O. 13891 Guidance Document Portal: An Exercise in Utility
Federal agencies have been required by Executive Order 13891 to create “a single, searchable, indexed database that contains or links to all guidance documents in effect.” Agencies…
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Trump’s Regulatory Reform Agenda by the Numbers, Summer 2020 Update
The administration released the Spring 2020 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Its purpose is to lay out regulatory priorities of the federal…
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A Look At Trump’s Deregulatory Record and How More of the Same Can Anchor the Next Coronavirus Recovery Package
I remembered wondering in 2017 whether the federal government would be larger or smaller after four years of Trump. The debt has now topped $25 trillion and the deficit alone…
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Six Ways the Trump Administration Has Reduced Regulation
Apart from sector-specific executive orders and directives to federal agencies, there are six prominent ways the Trump administration has streamlined regulation that were covered in…
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The Coronavirus Outbreak Highlights Importance of the Artificial Intelligence Debate
Tracing of individuals and other measures involving artificial intelligence are in the news with respect to managing individuals’ reentry into the economy in the wake…
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A One-Stop Executive Order 13891 Guidance Document Portal
If agencies are required to compile and list all their sub-regulatory guidance documents and post, link and consistently index them on a portal, can we…
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A Partial Inventory of Federal Agency Guidance Documents Before Trump’s Official Compendium Comes Due
Reporting on "regulatory dark matter" is still falling short.
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Sugarplums or Lumps of Coal? White House’s 192 Big Rules in Pipeline Herald More Regulation than Deregulation
No matter the presidential administration, every year there are thousands of federal rules and regulations compared to a relative handful of laws passed by Congress.
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What Regulations Did Trump Administration Add in 2019?
The Trump administration recently issued “Regulatory Reform Results for Fiscal Year 2019.” This is its fiscal year 2019 status update on the one-in, two-out directive initiated in Executive…
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What Regulations Did the Trump Administration Eliminate in 2019?
The Trump administration has issued its fiscal year 2019 status update on one-in, two-out. It’s called “Regulatory Reform Results for Fiscal Year 2019.” According to…
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Trump Regulatory Reform Agenda By the Numbers: End of One-In, Two-Out?
The Trump administration has released the Fall 2019 edition of the twice-yearly Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Late and incomplete compared to the last…
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The Unmeasured Costs of Federal Agency Liberation from Congress, Self-Funding, and Permanence
In considering the overall costs of regulation, little attention is given to the intractability of the administrative state itself. Congress shows little appetite for restraining…
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Deep State Guide to Resisting Trump’s Executive Orders on Guidance Document Abuse
Competitive Enterprise Institute founder and “despairing optimist” Fred L. Smith, Jr. lamented to me once: “It’s so hard to centrally plan deregulation!”…
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Costs of Economic Distortions Caused by ‘Ordinary’ Federal Spending, Subsidies, and Stimulus
While routine ground-level federal spending is less glamorous than interventionist national agendas, socialization of properties and resources, or economic “stimulus” and “big science” crusades, the…
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Costs of Government Steering by Direct Ownership or Control of Resources
If one thinks government ought to run a sector of the economy (single-payer health care, education, retirement, energy), then almost by definition that individual would…
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Vast Regulatory Costs of Top-Down National Plans, Agendas, and Legislative Schemes
If government steers in some societal, industrial, or sector-specific endeavor via top-down national plans, agendas, or legislative schemes, it can generate ongoing regulatory costs even…
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Unknown Societal Costs of Imposing Regulation Based on Secret (or Creatively Leveraged) Data
From the food pyramid and dietary guidelines, to vaping policies, to the Progressive zeal for eugenics, humility-challenged administrative experts can be mistaken, can mislead, or…
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Where Facebook Interim Report on Bias Falls Short
Today former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), in fulfillment of an arrangement with Facebook, released an independent Interim Report (and accompanying op-ed) cataloging the primary concerns of…
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Cataloging Regulatory Costs of Cronyism and Rent-Seeking in a Self-Interested Administrative State
Rent-seeking as a policy concern has been done to death: It’s been described over and over how regulation is often not about elevating the public…
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Is White House ‘Guidance on Compliance with the Congressional Review Act’ Restraining Agency Rulemaking?
At a time of trillion dollar runaway peacetime deficits, big-spenders can take smug comfort knowing that regulation is even less disciplined, especially where ostensibly sub-regulatory…
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Costs of Deadweight Effects of Federal Spending and of ‘Budget’ or ‘Transfer’ Rules
Theoretically, policymakers distinguish between economic and social regulation when examining and reporting on costs, effects, and employment.
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Regulations Trump Administration Has Eliminated So Far in 2019
The Trump administration promised to roll back red tape. So how goes 2019? The 2019 Spring Unified Agenda of Deregulatory and Regulatory Actions released by the…
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Will Antitrust End Trump’s Deregulatory Push?
Revelations that antitrust enforcers have conspired to divide jurisdiction and initiate antitrust investigations into Google and Apple (the U.S. Department of Justice) and Amazon and…
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Regulatory Costs of Anti-Property Approaches to Environmental Concerns
Environmental regulations transfer substantial wealth and can be subject to the same political failure and regulatory pork-barreling that characterize economic regulation—perhaps more so, given the…
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Costs of Loss of Anonymity in Administrative Surveillance State
The ability of citizens to communicate privately and to retain anonymity if desired are foundational rights slipping away in the regulatory panopticon of the administrative…
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Regulatory Costs of Blurring Corporate and Government Roles
In keeping with the tradition of ignoring political failure in service of the administrative state, the economic and social effects of GSEs, or government-sponsored enterprises,…