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.
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Blog
#NeverNeeded regulations hindering hurricane recovery
It may be time to revive the #NeverNeeded campaign to assist the Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton recovery efforts. The idea behind #NeverNeeded…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Refrigeration products and off-road vehicle debris
Iran fired 180 missiles at Israel. Hurricane Helene devastated North Carolina. Longshoremen went on strike. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent. The…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Bent coins and Irish potato taxes
The leader of the Hezbollah terrorist group died in an Israeli military strike. The 2024 Federal Register is poised to reach 80,000 pages this week.
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Products
Chapter 5: Page Counts and Numbers of Rules in the Federal Register
The Federal Register is the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations. Although its number of pages is often cited as…
Products
Chapter 3: Getting Beyond a Federal Regulatory Budget and the Limitations of Administrative Reform
Federal programs are funded either by taxes or by borrowing, with interest, from future tax collections. When Congress spends, no one questions that disclosure…
Products
Chapter 6: The Expanding Code of Federal Regulations
The page count in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), where the Register’s rules come to rest in small print, is not as dramatic…
Products
Chapter 9: A Note on Rule Reviews at OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Tracking the effects of rules and regulations, executive orders, memoranda, and regulatory guidance is vital. These alternative regulatory actions have become powerful means of working…
Products
Chapter 13: Federal Regulations Affecting State and Local Governments
Ten Thousand Commandments primarily emphasizes federal regulations imposed on the private sector. However, state and local officials’ complaints over federal mandates’ overriding their own…
Products
Chapter 1: Biden’s Regulatory “Modernization” Continues Whole-of-Government Pursuit of Coercive Progressivism
The 2022 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments extensively surveyed the Biden administration’s executive actions, rules, and memoranda that reversed the Trump regulatory policy and attenuated…
Products
Chapter 10: Analysis of “The Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions”
“The Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions” (the Unified Agenda) is the document in which agencies have outlined regulatory priorities…
Products
Chapter 8: Another Dimension of Regulatory Dark Matter: Over 22,000 Agency Public Notices Annually
Along with presidential proclamations are those of departments and agencies. These are numerous and sweeping. Through various kinds of guidance documents, notices, and policy statements,…
Products
Chapter 15: Regulation without Representation: The “Unconstitutionality Index”—13 Rules for Every Law
Administrative agencies, not Congress, do most U.S. lawmaking, despite Article I of the Constitution stipulating otherwise. Congress is to blame here, as it routinely enacts…
Products
Chapter 4: The Unknowable Costs of Regulation and Intervention and a $1.939 Trillion Estimate
The federal government undertakes little review of federal regulation to ensure that regulations individually do more good than bad each year, and it performs no…
Products
Executive Summary – Ten Thousand Commandments 2023
The cost of government extends well beyond what Washington taxes. Federal regulations add another $1.939 trillion to Americans’ annual burden. Federal environmental, safety and health,…
Products
Chapter 2: Competition Policy That Exiles Competitive Enterprise Harms Equity
Biden has repeatedly claimed, “I’m a capitalist.” He also rightly says that capitalism without competition is “exploitation.” However the top-down vision Biden promotes, which is…
Products
Chapter 11: Notable Rules and Rulemakings by Agency
In recent Unified Agenda editions and in other venues, federal agencies have noted the regulatory initiatives listed below, among many others pending or recently completed.
Products
Chapter 14: Government Accountability Office Database on Regulations
The federal government’s reports and databases on regulations serve different purposes: The Federal Register details and depicts the aggregate number of proposed and final rules—both…
Products
Chapter 16: Liberate to Stimulate: Framing an Agenda for Rightsizing Washington
It should be hard to enact bad law and regulation, not to get rid of them. A whole-of-government spending and regulatory agenda like the one…
Products
Chapter 12: Federal Regulations Affecting Small Business
Given discrepancies seen in the final rule counts, the overall counts of both small business rules and significant small business rules could also be understated.
Study
Ten Thousand Commandments 2023
View Full Report Here Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the size, scope, and cost of federal regulations, and…
Products
Chapter 7: The Presidential Dimension of Regulatory Dark Matter: Executive Orders and Memoranda
Executive orders, presidential memoranda, presidential directives, ersatz fact sheets of recent administrations, and other executive proclamations make up a substantial component of what has replaced…
Comment
Comment to FAST-41 Steering Council on reducing scope of mining industry
John G. CossaGeneral CounselFederal Permitting Improvement Steering Council1800 M St. NW, Suite 6006Washington, DC 20036 Submitted via Regulations.gov November 22, 2023 RE: Permitting Council Docket…
Blog
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…
News Release
CEI supports Rep. Foxx’s amendment to halt OMB’s A-4 rewrite
The House of Representatives will soon consider an amendment from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) to the 2024 Financial Services and General Government spending bill…
Testimony
Regulatory streamlining in Pennsylvania would boost opportunities for state residents
Introduction Good morning, members of the Senate Majority Policy Committee. My name is James Broughel and I am a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise…
The Gazette
Grassley’s USDA spending reforms would protect farmers and taxpayers
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is spending billions of dollars each year for programs that Congress never specifically authorized. Fortunately, Sens. Chuck Grassley, (R-IA.)…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Junk fees and pool pumps
Hamas attacked Israel, and another tragedy is unfolding in the Middle East. Claudia Goldin won the economics Nobel for her work on women in…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Gag harvests and helium contracts
Populist Republicans got rid of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. In a classic bit of political strategy, they did not have a replacement in…
News Release
CEI Supports Legislation from Sen. Rick Scott to Cut Back on Outdated, Duplicative, and Unnecessary Rules
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) recently introduced the Unnecessary Agency Regulations Act, a bill that directs the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations: Tea Experts and Coin Batteries
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited America. The federal government is a week away from a potential partial shutdown. Sen. Bob Menendez was…
Blog
Flawed guidance for monetizing nature should be withdrawn
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has proposed new guidance aimed at improving how federal agencies account for environment-related costs and…
Forbes
Regulatory Reforms Belong In The FY2024 Budget Deal
Certain regulatory reforms with deep bipartisan endorsement should be incorporated into contentious fiscal budget agreements, particularly when spending cuts are difficult (which is always). We’re…
Frederick News Post
A new proposal for constitutional restoration
Now that Congress has gotten past debt-ceiling drama, next up is wrangling the nation’s budget for the coming year. A budget is about policy and…
Forbes
Once-Promising Guidance Document Disclosures Are Stagnating Under Biden: Inventory and Observations
Laws passed by Congress are archived by subject matter in the U.S. Code. The rules and regulations that incubate in the daily Federal…
Forbes
Beware: The Biden Administration Refers To “Economically Significant” Regulations In The Past Tense
The past few days have brought renewed attention to Biden’s Executive Order 14,094 on “Modernizing…
Study
Four Principles for Real Permitting Reform
Federal legislators continue to focus on permitting reform. For example, the Senate is reportedly1 working on more ambitious reform than those recently enacted in the…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: soybean standards and pain medication limits
The FTC issued its new draft merger guidelines. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from milk marketing to Postal Service snitches. On to the…
News Release
House Oversight and Accountability Committee unanimously advances regulatory reform legislation
Earlier today, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee advanced 41 to 0 the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act from Rep. James Comer (R-KY).
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: historical captain permits and apricot marketing
The Supreme Court agreed to hear CEI’s Moore v. U.S. tax case in its upcoming term. It also handed down rulings in controversial cases…
Daily Caller
Don’t Stop At College — End Race-Based Admissions In Public Schools
There’s an important battle brewing in our public schools between equity and treating students equally under the law. Equitable treatment of one class of students…
Blog
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.
Comment
OMB’s Problematic Circular A-4 Rewrite
OUTLINE Discard the pro-regulatory bias of the federal government Restore regulatory streamlining prior to Circular A-4 rewrite Restore the $100 million threshold for regulation…
Comment
CEI Comments on Proposed Circular A-4, Regulatory Analysis
Dear Administrator Revesz: I appreciate this opportunity to provide comments on the proposed Circular A-4, “Regulatory Analysis.”1 The focus of my comments is on the…
News Release
House passes sensible regulatory reform bills to shrink power of the administrative state
Earlier today, the House passed 220 to 211 the Separation of Powers Restoration Act (SOPRA) sponsored by Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI).
Blog
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…
News Release
U.S. House passes legislation to preserve consumer choice in kitchen appliances
The U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 1615 today, a bill that would protect Americans ability to choose the type of stove they want in…
Blog
Congress should block Biden’s harmful environmental regulations with power of the purse
Congress shouldn’t sit back and watch as the Biden administration proposes and finalizes costly and harmful energy and environmental regulation. Instead, it needs to take…
Blog
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…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Transparency for government, privacy for people with Brian Hawkins
In this week’s episode we talk discuss Tim Carney’s view on why big government is good for big business, Stone Washington on the…
Blog
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,…
Testimony
Testimony of Wayne Crews: Removing the Burdens of Government Overreach
I appreciate the opportunity to discuss issues surrounding Removing the Burdens of Government Overreach, and I thank Chairman Arrington, Ranking Member Boyle, and Members of…
Blog
A remembrance: C. Boyden Gray, 1943-2023
We mourn the passing of C. Boyden Gray. He was a man of his family, the law, and his country. Boyden served in the highest…
The Hill
Don’t give federal agencies carte blanche on regulations — make Congress vote
The Limit, Save, Grow Act, recently passed by the Republican House of Representatives, would raise the nation’s borrowing limit through March 31 of next year or…
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