There are two main areas in which Congress can enact meaningful reform. The first is to rein in regulatory guidance documents, which we refer to as “regulatory dark matter,” whereby agencies regulate through Federal Register notices, guidance documents, and other means outside standard rulemaking procedure. The second is to enact a series of reforms to increase agency transparency and accountability of all regulation and guidance. These include annual regulatory report cards for rulemaking agencies and regulatory cost estimates from the Office of Management and Budget for more than just a small subset of rules.
In 2019, President Trump signed two executive orders aimed at stopping the practice of agencies using guidance documents to effectively implement policy without going through the legally required notice and comment process.
Featured Posts

Forbes
The “Guidance Out Of Darkness Act” Is The Low-Hanging Fruit Of Regulatory Reform
We often marvel that we don’t actually know how many federal agencies exist. And the number of “commissions” and programs (many expired…

News Release
Senator Ron Johnson and 15 GOP Colleagues Introduce Guidance Out of Darkness Act in 118th Congress
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act this week, a bill aimed at bringing transparency to agency guidance documents…

Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Biden released a $6.8 trillion proposed budget. The labor force grew by 311,000 people in February. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging…
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Blog
Regulatory Reform Bills in the 118th Congress: The Article I Regulatory Budget Act
The federal government is supposed to put out an annual budget to track its spending. Why doesn’t it do the same thing for regulation? The…
Blog
Regulatory Reform Bills in the 118th Congress: The GOOD Act
Regulatory dark matter is a serious problem. Agencies are supposed to run new regulations through a formal process which includes publishing a draft version of…
Blog
Regulatory Reform Bills in the 118th Congress: The REINS Act
Every new session of Congress is a new chance to enact substantive regulatory reform. This post inaugurates an occasional series highlighting reform bills that have…
Washington Examiner
Democrats and Republicans: Unite around abundance
Inflation may finally be starting to wane, but there is no clear end in sight to the economic turmoil that Americans have experienced for nearly…
Americans for Tax Reform
Q&A on Credit Card Regulation
Americans for Tax Reform has been consistently opposed to government regulation of debit and credit card transactions. Last year, ATR opposed the Credit Card Competition…
News Release
CEI Launches “Eye on FTC” Campaign to Raise Awareness of Agency Overreach and Lack of Transparency
WASHINGTON—The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) launched a new “Eye on FTC” educational campaign today to raise awareness about overreach and a lack of…
Staff & Scholars

Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation

Ryan Young
Senior Economist
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Regulatory Reform

Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Founder; Chairman Emeritus
- Automobiles and Roads
- Aviation
- Business and Government

Sam Kazman
Counsel Emeritus
- Antitrust
- Automobiles and Roads
- Banking and Finance

Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Senior Fellow
- Climate
- Energy
- Energy and Environment