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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, catching…
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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 independent…
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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 to…
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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 that…
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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 is…
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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 the…
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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 and…
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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 action.”…
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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“) we…
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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 to…
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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 Congress.
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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 was one…
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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 a…
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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 we…
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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 Act,…
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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 regulatory…
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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 Budget’s …
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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 limit is…
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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 growth,…
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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, Rahm…
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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 in…
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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. That…
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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 include…
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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 that…
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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. Without…
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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 today.
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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…
