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State of the Less Regulated Union: 6 Ways Trump Has Cut Red Tape
Rollbacks of federal regulation are a main element of the Trump administration’s economic recipe and deserve credit. It’s highly likely that the loosening of red…
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Antitrust Resurgence Could Transform Tech Innovators into Lumbering Public Utilities
Regulation in the technology sector is worse than government merely picking winners and losers.
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All Agency Guidance Invalid Unless Submitted to Congress
We urgently need a catalog of guidance documents that were actually submitted to Congress and the Government Accountability Office as required. …
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The 2018 Unconstitutionality Index: 28 Federal Agency Rules for Every Law Congress Passes
Even when an administration tries to cut regulation, the number of rules from hundreds of federal agencies will vastly outstrip the number of laws Congress passes.
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Trump Regulations: Federal Register Page Count Is Lowest In Quarter Century
Today, Friday, December 29, 2017, is the last federal workday of the year. This presents an opportunity to round up all rules and regulations produced…
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So, What Regulations Did Trump Eliminate?
President Donald Trump has made much news over slowing down the flow of regulations in 2017, and over new promises to reduce even more…
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Who Will Regulate Tom Wheeler?
When free competition suffers, it is government intervention that is the problem, not the companies doing the competing.
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Sugarplums or Lumps of Coal? The White House’s 140 Economically Significant Rules
In the White House’s new "Unified Agenda," the administration touts success in surpassing President Trump’s goal to eliminate two regulations for every one adopted.
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Trump’s New Regulatory Reform Agenda – By the Numbers
Today the Trump administration released the Fall 2017 edition of the twice-yearly Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, accompanied…
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Testimony on Trump’s Executive Orders and Regulatory Task Forces before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives House Oversight and Government Reform Committee conducted a hearing entitled “Regulatory Reform Task Forces Check-In,” to which I…
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Red Tape Rollback: Trump Least-Regulatory President Since Reagan
The Trump mode has been to regulate bureaucrats rather than the public. New, large-scale regulation has largely stopped in 2017, and where it hasn’t, new…
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Record Federal Income Tax Receipts Still No Match for Cost of Regulation
Corporate income taxes collected by the U.S. government, estimated as noted at $278 billion for 2017, are dwarfed by regulatory costs.
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Trump’s Regulations at Six Months: The Least-Regulatory President since Reagan
No one is surprised that the Trump administration would issue considerably fewer regulations than the Obama administration. Today we got not only “Donald J. Trump’s…
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Cooking Up Fewer Regulations: Trump’s Significant Proposed Rules Down Over 70 Percent Compared To Obama
Whether looking at predecessors’ first or final years, Trump is so far the least regulatory president of all.
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Two Potential Outcomes for the Office of American Innovation
Yesterday the White House announced the launch of an Office of American Innovation. This is the latest of several moving and overlapping parts to President Trump’s…
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Assessing Prospects for Bipartisan Consensus on Regulatory Reform
The federal government doesn’t merely spend $4 trillion a year, it directs the private sector to spend and otherwise re-purposes enormous resources.
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13,953 Human Lifetimes Spent Annually on Federal Paperwork (2017 Edition)
The burden of federal government paperwork now takes up 9.778 billion hours a year.
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The 2017 Unconstitutionality Index: 18 Federal Rules for Every Law Congress Passes
Federal agencies in 2016 issued 18 rules and regulations for every law Congress passed.
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Federal Register Breaks Record by 10,000 Pages
Today standing at 91,642 pages, the Federal Register is 10,000 pages higher than the prior all-time record.
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Obama’s 2016 Federal Register Just Topped Highest Page Count of All Time
Well that didn’t him take long. President Barack Obama’s Federal Register, the daily depository of rules and regulations, added 572 pages today, and stands at…
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Federal Register Tops 80,000 Pages, 3rd Highest Ever Count
Today’s Federal Register added 572 pages, and stands at 80,562 pages for 2016.
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Federal Register Hits 4th Highest Ever Count, Will Top 80,000 Pages Tuesday
Yesterday the Federal Register hit its fifth-highest count of 79,380 pages.
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Federal Register Hits 5th Highest Ever Count, Days from All-Time High
We’ve documented here throughout November that the Federal Register is steamrolling through 2016, Obama’s final year.
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Federal Register Adds 1,177 Pages, Hits 7th Highest Ever Count
We noted here on November 1 that the Federal Register is on a roll, hitting 76,270 pages, the 8th highest level ever.
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A Federal Register Growth Spurt, Third Day of Record-Breaking Streak
The Federal Register is on a roll. On Friday, it hit 75,314 pages, the 10th highest level of all time, even though more than two…
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A Monster Federal Register This Halloween
Today, the 2016 Federal Register stands at 75, 670 pages, the 9th highest “yearly” count of all time—but it’s only Halloween.
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 13: Establish ‘Office of No’
Implement a “Do Not Regulate” Office to Clarify Economic Liberalization Alternatives to, and Explicit Exit Strategies from, Command and Control Rules.
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White House Stalling Regulation Report Until after Election?
Today, Monday, October 17th, marks the latest that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has ever been with its annual draft Report…
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Federal Register Tops 70,000 Pages, Headed for a Major Record
There’s no measure of regulation worse than counting Federal Register pages. But on the other hand, the bureaucracies aren’t exactly bending over backward to disclose…
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 12: Acknowledge and Minimize Indirect Costs
This is the 12th entry in a series on how the next president can reduce bureaucracy. Earlier installments have addressed a freeze on rulemaking, the role…
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 11: Analyze “Transfer” Costs
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 10: Account Separately for Economic, Health and Safety, and Environmental Regulations
This is the 10th entry in a series on how the next president can reduce bureaucracy. Earlier installments have addressed a freeze on rulemaking, the role…
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 9: Improve Classification of Major Rules
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 8: Transparency Report Cards
Improving disclosure and transparency for regulatory output and trends is one area where a new president can unambiguously undertake unilateral initiatives without statutory regulatory reform.
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 7: Track Regulatory Accumulation
This is the seventh entry in a series on how the next president can reduce the scope of bureaucracy. Earlier installments have addressed a freeze on…
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 6: Enhance Disclosure in ‘Unified Agenda’
There are rules, and then there are rules. Agencies are supposed to alert the public to their priorities in the semi-annual “Regulatory Plan and Unified…
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 5: Scrutinize Informal ‘Guidance’ Documents
When a new president scrutinizes agency rules as we have called for in this series, he or she also needs to bring “guidance documents” under…
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How A New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 4: Expand Number of Rules Receiving Cost Analysis
The Office of Management and Budget conducts review of some significant or major rules’ cost-benefit analyses, but not quite as many or as deeply as…
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 3: Review, Revise, Repeal, and Sunset
Short of the moratorium advocated at the top of this series, and in keeping with the spirit of executive orders and retrospective reviews that agencies…
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 2: Boost Resources and Free Market Staff
If we must take the central, top-down administrative state as a given—and it seems that for the time being the Constitution is not coming to…
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How a New President Can Roll Back Bureaucracy, Part 1: Freeze Regulations Temporarily
In today’s economy, talk about regulatory liberalization has become a bit more bipartisan.
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Rewards and Risks of a Federal Regulatory Budget (Part 6)
By shedding light on comparative agency activity, budgeting and simultaneous improved congressional oversight could counter agency overreach.
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Rewards and Risks of a Federal Regulatory Budget (Part 5)
Benefits, even more so than costs do not lend themselves to measurement by a third party or external observer, and abuse will result from the…
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Rewards and Risks of a Federal Regulatory Budget (Part 4)
This week I began by making the case for the idea of a regulatory cost budget but wanted to spend time exploring looming pitfalls and…
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Rewards and Risks of a Federal Regulatory Budget (Part 3)
Monday in this space, I advocated the idea of a regulatory cost budget but noted there exist looming pitfalls and political traps that could derail…
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Rewards and Risks of a Federal Regulatory Budget (Part 2)
I advocate the idea of a regulatory cost budget but note that there exists looming pitfalls and political traps that could derail it or easily…
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Rewards and Risks of a Federal Regulatory Budget (Part 1)
Our case for capping and “budgeting” regulatory costs across federal agencies opens by asserting that that, perhaps apart from certain raw compliance and paperwork burdens,…
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Can a New President Cut Regulations Unilaterally?
Both presidential candidates have delivered economic speeches over the past two weeks, and both have at least given a nod to red tape and the…
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Next Administration Will Have to Try Harder on Regulatory Moratorium
In a speech yesterday to the Detroit Economic Club, Donald Trump proposed a moratorium on new federal regulations.
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Federal Register Tops 50,000 Pages, Yet Obama’s Report to Congress Is MIA
The annual Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Unfunded Mandates on State, Local, and Tribal Entities is quite overdue.