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Anticipating post-Chevron federal power moves
In a series of landmark rulings just before Independence Day (SEC v. Jarkesy, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, and Corner Post, Inc. v. Board…
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Takeaways from Biden’s new Spring 2024 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations
At the end of the July 4th holiday weekend, the Biden administration Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released the Spring 2024 edition of…
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Reflecting on independence: More than fireworks and barbecues
As we enjoy barbecues, fireworks, and parades on the Fourth of July, we also reflect upon the deeper significance of our nation’s Independence Day…
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Can moderators ask debate questions that don’t presume a progressive policy agenda?
Numerous policy issues are shaping this year’s first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, as well as the entire campaign atmosphere. These…
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Biden-era unfunded and funded mandates alike are co-opting state and local priorities
Policymakers are increasingly aware of the federal red tape burden on small businesses, but they should also recognize its emergent implications for state…
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Congress should heed GAO’s new regulatory reform recommendations
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a December 2023 report titled “Options for Enhancing Congressional Oversight of Rulemaking and Establishing an Office of…
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The end of the ‘economically significant’ rule
Friends and allies in the liberty movement still often refer to high-cost regulations from the Biden administration as “economically significant” rules.
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The federal government’s shift toward controlling small business
Recent proclamations by the Biden administration have revealed a worrying shift in the federal government’s attitude toward America’s small businesses. In a new…
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New bill would increase spending transparency, more regulatory transparency needed
Galileo may not have uttered the famous words, “Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so,” but the sentiment behind that…
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Navigating the maze of federal regulations in 2024: What to know
In a bureaucratic whirlwind, the 2024 Federal Register is attaining new heights, topping 41,000 pages today. An unsettling new norm for the past few…
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Subsidy-free capitalism may require a constitutional amendment
Automobiles, electrification, ample consumer goods and mass marketing, a construction boom, and access to credit helped fuel the Roaring Twenties of a century…
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The vital role of private conservation: A different perspective on Earth Day
Amidst the jubilation over government-led environmental initiatives on yet another Earth Day yesterday, it’s crucial to highlight a perspective too often overlooked: private conservation,…
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The eventual federal regulatory budget has bipartisan roots
With apologies to Margaret Thatcher, I’ll often joke that when the federal government runs out of other people’s money, it keeps spending anyway. The…
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New lunar time zones reinforce importance of keeping regulators earthbound
Maybe when actually applied to the blackness of space, regulatory dark matter can be a good thing. Joe Biden this week directed NASA…
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This model AI legislation would regulate government instead of the private sector
Brand new guidance from the Office of Management and Budget governing uses of artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the federal government was issued last…
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Classifying regulations is now more confusing thanks to Biden administration
Joe Biden’s Modernizing Regulatory Review executive order (E.O. 14094) raised the threshold for a “significant regulatory action” from $100 million to $200 million…
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One great moment in the budget battles: GOP’s ‘Policy Statement on Deregulation’
Today marks the release of the White House’s $7.3 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2025, even as policymakers continue their wrangling over…
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SOTU 2024: Unparalleled spending, regulation, and dependency
In bumper-sticker fashion, we have fondly summed up Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union Addresses (SOTU) as appeals for more spending, regulation…
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Where do regulations go when Congress shutters an agency?
The way the federal government spends money rarely changes until a crisis comes along. Arguably, we’re already there with federal debt service (interest) payments…
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Worried about massive federal debt? Time to right-size the regulators
In the annals of federal bloat, a milestone is looming as noted in another post last week: 2024 interest payments on America’s $34…
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Today’s federal spending makes the Louisiana Purchase look like pocket change
The week of Presidents’ Day 2024 comes at a lull before contentious budget battles resume in early March. It is thus an opportune…
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Red tape? More like chains, thanks to deficit spending and subsidies
Federal subsidies and grants are infamous for having strings attached. That’s nothing new, but those strings are increasingly chains. Businesses are being seduced…
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Attention regulators: Be on the lookout for the ALERT Act
It has been almost a quarter-century since the federal government performed an assessment of the aggregate costs of regulation of regulatory intervention. Late last…
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Use the Congressional Review Act to strike rules not reported to Congress and GAO
Significant attention is likely to turn to Joe Biden’s ambitious regulatory agenda before summertime. That’s because rules the administration finalizes “late”—during the last…
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Congress could revoke many costly Biden admin rules with Congressional Review Act. Here’s a list!
Until April of 2023, a federal rule costing $100 million was considered “economically significant.” Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14094 (Modernizing Regulatory Review) raised…
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Unconstitutionality Index going into 2024: 46 rules for every law
The Biden’s administration’s 3,018 rules and regulations of 2023 is fairly typical of agency output these days. But while rule counts remain relatively…
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Federal Register 2023 gives Congress 90,402 reasons to restrain the regulators
As we bid farewell to 2023 and ring in 2024, the Federal Register reveals a noteworthy chapter in regulatory history under the Joe Biden…
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American small businesses are paying through the roof for regulations
In a new column at Forbes, I take look at the National Association of Manufacturers’ (NAM) update of its …
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Biden’s yearly Federal Register second-highest page count ever, could still score number one
The Federal Register is the daily depository of rules and regulations. Today, the count stood at 86,256 pages, with three weeks to go for…
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Federal government waves goodbye to ‘economically significant’ regulations
Last week, the Fall 2023 edition of the White House’s Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions appeared. It features…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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‘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…
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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“)…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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),…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…