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
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Is Congress even trying? 3,248 new rules vs. 175 laws
In 2024, federal agencies issued 3,248 rules and regulations, while Congress enacted only 175 laws. I refer to the simple ratio—19 rules for…
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Free the Economy podcast: Draining the swamp with Jim Bovard
In this week’s episode we cover fake endangered species, Pennsylvania’s climate policy showdown, a robust defense of property rights in New…
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This week in ridiculous regulations: Seat belts and eagle possession
This week’s roundup will be a little different than usual. Since the new year began mid-week, and I already published a breakdown of 2024’s year-end numbers, as…
Search Posts
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CEI Experts on the State of the Union
ECONOMIC MOBILITY Iain Murray, Vice President for Strategy: “The fact is: Today’s America is divided between those who work…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
43 new regulations, from flood elevations to extra parentheses.
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Reining in the Executive Branch Bureaucracy, Part 3: Make Regulations Transparent Like the Budget
Since the Federalist Papers, America has debated “Energy in the Executive.” But President Obama’s 2014 agenda framed by his…
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Reining in the Executive Branch Bureaucracy, Part 2: Regulatory Benefits? Maybe Not
Since the Federalist Papers, America has debated “Energy in the Executive.” But President Obama’s 2014 agenda framed by his State of…
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Target, Retailers Use Dodd-Frank to Skimp on Data Security
Chutzpah, thy name is the National Retail Federation! In the wake of the recent credit and debit card breach at Target that may have compromised…
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The Loss of Net Neutrality Is Not a Detriment to Consumers
Last week’s announcement that the District Court of Appeals struck down the non-discrimination and no-blocking rules of the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) 2010 Order on…
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Reining in the Executive Branch Bureaucracy, Part 1: Measure Regulatory Costs
Since the Federalist Papers, America has debated "Energy in the Executive." But President Obama's 2014 agenda framed by his State of…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
57 new regulations, from shoeing horses to Florida avocados.
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Obama Announces NSA Reforms Could Undermine U.S. Leadership in the Global Information Economy
President Obama outlined plans to “reform” the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs in a Friday morning speech at the Justice Department. To his…
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“Wall Street” Regs Devastate Main Street Banks and Credit Unions
Again and again, when regulators implement a new Dodd-Frank regulation aimed at "Wall Street," it is Main Street banks and credit unions that are forced…
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CEI Podcast for January 16, 2014: FCC Loses Net Neutrality Court Case
Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia argues that while the case looks like a victory on the surface, it still gives the FCC plenty…
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Budget Deal Agreement and State of the Union Address Continue to Neglect Debt and Economy
In the lead-up to the State of the Union...a briefing theme was that President Barack Obama has little appetite for a debt reduction deal and…
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Obamacare Court Ruling in Halbig a Major Blow to Opt-Out States
The court’s ruling today in Halbig v. Sebelius delivers a major blow to the states that chose not to participate in the Obamacare insurance…
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Congressional Research Service Misinterprets Monetary History
Last month, the Congressional Research Service released a report on Bitcoin analyzing the structure of the network and its implications, if any, on monetary policy. The…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
38 new regulations, from job descriptions to Cape Sable thoroughworts.
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Is FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler for or against Net Neutrality? Yes
In what the Washington Post referred to as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler's strongest endorsement yet of net neutrality, he said: Public policy…
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CEI Podcast for January 9, 2013: Reining in Sue and Settle with the REDO Act
A bill called the REDO Act, which comes up for a House vote today, would limit a practice called sue and settle. Sue and settle…
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Loss of Economic Freedom Takes a Toll on Small Businesses
The 2014 edition of the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom is set for release next week, and for America, the news…
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CEI’s 2014 Unconstitutionality Index: 56 Regulations for Every Law
Every now and then one sees a cute article like this Los Angeles Times piece lamenting that Congress is "ineffective" because…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
66 new regulations, from school lunches to furnace fans.
Human Events
A top 10 list for Congress in 2014
I am no David Letterman, but I appreciate a good Top Ten list. As we enter 2014, it occurred to me that Congress could do…
USA Today
Extending Benefits Would Do More Harm.
Unemployment insurance extensions in the past five years have kept at least 600,000 people out of the labor force, because people tend to ride a…
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Bogus Rationale for Obamacare Still Being Peddled Even after Study Debunked It
"More bad news for Obamacare and its proponents. A new study from Oregon shows that" expanded Medicaid coverage “increased–rather than decreased–both the number of folks…
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Cataloging Washington’s Hidden Costs, Part 5: When Regulation Tramples Health and Safety
Act surprised...Show concern...Deny...Deny...Deny. —Anonymous What if anybody in power ever actually paid attention to the body count of federal regulation? We just finished another year…
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Two Cheers for Tapered Quantitative Easing
Over at the Washington Times, I encourage the Fed to taper back the rest of the QE program, and point out that the Fed may…
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2013 Ends with an 80,330-Page Federal Register and 3,659 Final Rules and Regulations
The Federal Register wrapped up 2013 with a third-highest count ever, of 80,330 pages. (The published version contains 80,462 pages but I net out blank…
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No, Legislative Fixes to Obamacare Weren’t Blocked by the GOP
As Obamacare's implementation went badly enough that it was mocked by comedians on late-night TV, a search for excuses began. The result was the now…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
74 new regulations, from non-toxic ammunition to shrimp electronic logbooks.
USA Today
We all need a fresh start in 2014
Another change? We need to stop the avalanche of regulations that are slowing our recovery. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) reports that government agencies issued…
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A New Year of Regulation: Obama’s Record-Setting Federal Register
[caption id="attachment_72593" align="alignleft" width="168"] Duly Enacted Laws vs. Unaccountable Regulation. The Federal Register runs wild. The federal government spends heavily; it also regulates heavily.[/caption] The Federal…
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Target Breach — Are Dodd-Frank “Swipe Fee” Price Controls to Blame?
Target wants you to know it is oh-so-sorry for any inconvenience its data SNAFU (as OpenMarket is a family blog, please look up the…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
71 new regulations, from charitable donations to video programming for the blind.
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Volcker Rule Overshoots Wall Street to Hit Utah
You might think after the disastrous debut of HealthCare.gov and thousands of insurance cancellations, those who call themselves progressives might just have a little humility…
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Cataloging Washington’s Hidden Costs, Part 4: The Costs of Poor Regulatory Sausage Making
In the first installment of “Cataloging Washington’s Hidden Costs,” the focus was the loss of liberty in…
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CEI Podcast for December 18, 2013: The FDA Goes after 23andMe
The Food and Drug Administration recently banned 23andMe, a genetic testing service, from marketing its product to consumers. CEI Executive Director and Senior Fellow Gregory…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
56 new regulations, from toddler beds to eagle permits.
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BPA Junk Science Headaches
Could your affection for bottled water be responsible for your bout with migraines? Apparently so, if you believe the latest headlines about the chemical…
USA Today
Drowning In A Costly, Intrusive Federal Regulatory Flood
Earlier this week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has a long history of highlighting Washington’s regulatory excess, said that during the first week of December,…
The American Spectator
The Legislature’s First Job Is Not to Legislate
Defenders of Sen. Harry Reid’s triggering of the “nuclear option,” ending the filibuster for all Executive Branch nominees save those to the Supreme Court, call…
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Minimum Wage Increases Harm the Young, Unskilled, and Less Educated
Minimum wage increases eliminate some jobs. Real world examples abound. As a business owner explains: The minimum wage kills jobs. End of story. I am…
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CEI Podcast for December 12, 2013: The Affordable Care Act’s Marriage Penalties
The Affordable Care Act's subsides and tax credits are structured in such a way as to cause thousands of dollars worth of penalties for many…
The American Spectator
Fixing the nation’s leaky waterworks
Here’s a novel idea: Why not unleash the creative talents of America’s best scientists and engineers, and allow the products and technologies they develop to…
Blog
The Volcker Winter Storm — Bad Rule, Worse Implementation
On a snowy day in Washington, several federal agencies packed some mean regulatory snowballs that will most likely overshoot their supposed destination of Wall Street…
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Volcker Rule Curbs Useful, Profitable Proprietary Trading, Not Risky Lending
The government just approved a regulation called the Volcker Rule to curb proprietary trading by banks -- even though such trading did not cause the financial crisis,…
The Atlantic
How Pope Francis Misunderstands the World
Just how free the free market really is today is debatable. The United States is perceived as the paragon of free-market capitalism. And yet over…
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Busybodies in Congress Prepared to Re-Prohibit Voice Communications During Flight
After two decades with a ban on the books, the Federal Communications Commission is set to consider allowing transmitting mobile devices on aircraft. On…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
95 new regulations, from mad cow disease to falconry federalism.
Fox News
Regulation Nation: Gov’t regs estimated to pound private sector with $1.8T in costs
A new report on the government's regulatory actions was released just before Thanksgiving, and it contains more than 3,300 rules -- which the Competitive Enterprise…
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Retailers Only Sell Half a Loaf in their Analysis of the Costs of Interchange Fees
In a comment on my American Spectator article on the deleterious effects of debit card interchange fees on American households, Sara Durr, Spokesperson for…
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President Pushes Welfare Rather than Opportunity and Social Mobility in Speech about Inequality
"President Obama on Wednesday declared that addressing income inequality would be the focus of 'all' of the White House’s efforts 'for the rest of…
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The Administration’s Regulatory Uncertainty
Groups like the Center for American Progress are claiming that the possibility of another row over the budget and debt ceiling are creating “uncertainty”…
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Hypocritical New Yorkers Whine about High Housing Prices while Supporting High-Price Policies
The New York Post today has a story on what it describes as "new hipsters fight[ing] old hipsters in Brooklyn." The gist of it…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
77 new regulations, from red porgies to homopolymers.
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CEI Podcast for November 27, 2013: Toxic Turkey Day?
Senior Fellow Angela Logomasini debunks scare stories about chemicals in your family's Thanksgiving dinner, from BPA in canned foods to naturally occurring pesticides in potatoes.
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Cataloging Washington’s Hidden Costs, Part 3: The Costs of Regulatory Benefits
In the first installment of "Cataloging Washington's Hidden Costs," the topic was loss of liberty; in…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
60 new regulations, from salamanders to beans from Jordan.
Fox News
Obamacare Will Kill the Middle Class
This is what it looks like when government tries to create a more perfect society by intervening in the private economy and taking away consumer…
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Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda to Show the “Evils” of Private Alcohol Sales
As if there wasn’t enough money in politics, now government agencies are using taxpayer dollars—our dollars—in an attempt to influence state policy. The National Institutes…
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Can the Government Regulate Bitcoins?
Bitcoins themselves cannot be regulated under current law, at least not directly. But certain activities involving…
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Government “Study” on Internet Tax Hides Harmful Small Business Effects
Under presidents of both parties, the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy has produced quality independent studies on the harmful tax and regulatory burden on…
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Obamacare Fallout Continues: Obamacare “Winner” Turns Out to Be a Loser Instead
"You screwed me over," says a woman cited by President Obama as an Obamacare success story. Jessica Sanford was used as a prop in the president's "…
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Dumbest Reason to Be Skeptical of Autonomous Vehicles: They Might Cost Auto Mechanics Their Jobs
Today, the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held a hearing on “How Autonomous Vehicles Will Shape the Future…
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Cataloging Washington’s Hidden Costs, Part 2: The Unmeasured Impacts of Economic Intervention
Back in Part 1 of Cataloging Washington's Hidden Costs, the topic was the incalculable cost of the loss of liberty in…
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A More Unequal America
Inequality grows hand-in-hand with the growth of the regulatory state. The proliferation of regulations increases economic inequality, since powerful people and politically connected companies know how to shape and manipulate…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
66 new regulations, from corporate mergers to dried bacteria.
Blog
We Didn’t Regulate Credit Cards, We Regulated People
That was the upshot of a panel I spoke at yesterday in New York at the Atlas Liberty Forum. It looked at the impact of…
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Is the FTC Already Capable of Regulating Patent Demand Letters?
The answer is no, except under special circumstances. The question itself arises from comments by Julie P. Samuels of the Electronic…
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The Federal Register Is about to Top 70,000 Pages — And it’s Not Even December
This morning, the Federal Register stood at 68,980 pages. It’s the daily depository of all federal regulations proposed and final. It is our unfortunate Principia Regulatica.
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Illegal Change to Obamacare Is Designed to Scapegoat Insurers, Not Restore Canceled Insurance Policies
If aliens from outer space read today's newspapers, they would assume that America is a dictatorship, not a republic, and that President Obama has the authority…
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Obama Allows Illegal Health Policies, Quickly Pivots to Economy
The furor over the Healthcare.gov website that is merely supposed to automate the process of determining if one is eligible or…
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Antitrust as Corporate Welfare: Imposed Concessions and Conditions on Mergers Are a Fundamental Error
As is now commonplace, American Airlines needed to relent to conditions imposed on the merger with US Airways to secure Department of Justice approval, primarily…
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Under Obamacare, People Pay More for Inferior Health Plans, Lose Health Insurance They Liked
A Colorado woman who championed Obamacare lost her insurance plan. As a CBS TV station in Denver noted, "Millions of people are getting cancellation…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
78 new regulations, from toy guns to tires.
Blog
FDA Trans-Fat Ban Sets Stage to Target Sugar, Salt, and More
On November 7, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced plans to change its classification of trans-fatty acids and remove the designation "Generally Recognized…
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Why Obama’s Pivot from Obamacare to Infrastructure Makes No Sense
President Obama is in New Orleans today to pivot attention to what he’ll call leveraging investment in infrastructure. From the ones and zeros of the…
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Twitter, the JOBS Act, and the Return to IPO Normalcy
The headline read that the company's initial public offering price is "high," and "so is its valuation." The accompanying story explained that the latest tech…
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CEI Podcast for November 7, 2013: A Prohibitive Excise Tax
A new CEI study finds that the most expensive ingredient in beer isn’t grain, hops, or equipment: it’s taxes. Study co-author and Fellow in Consumer…
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Memo to Road Socialists: There Is Nothing Unlibertarian about Road Pricing
Virginia just elected Democrat Terry McAuliffe as governor, as had been predicted by every poll conducted during the past few months -- although at a…
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Senate Poised to Pass Employment Non-Discrimination Act
Yesterday, the Senate voted 61-to-30 to invoke cloture on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban workplace bias based on sexual orientation or…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
92 new regulations, from student loan paperwork to government employee travel allowances.
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Cataloging Washington’s Hidden Costs: Part 1: The Loss of Liberty
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so. —Quote frequently attributed to Galileo that he probably never said. Washington is teeing up…
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CEI Study Supports Tax Cuts for Beer
If you’ve read Lauren French’s Politico article on the two beer tax reduction bills currently under consideration in Congress, you might think that the Competitive…
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Mel Watt Fails Taxpayer, Privacy, and Transparency Tests
Former Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., failed his procedural confirmation vote today to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the government housing entities Fannie…
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Towards a More Transparent Fed
Iain Murray and I have a piece in today's American Spectator breaking down the new paper we co-wrote with John Berlau.
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Happy Halloween! FAA to Allow Portable Electronic Devices During All Flight Phases
A month ago, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) recommended that the agency drop its ban on portable electronic device (PED)…
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CEI Podcast for October 30, 2013: Bringing Transparency to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
George Mason University law professor and Mercatus Center senior scholar Todd Zywicki discusses his paper, "The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Savior or Menace?"…
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Don’t Let FTC Shut Down Legit Credit Repair Services
Next to the infamous Healthcare.gov, the website that featured the most bugs of the last month was FTC.gov, the site of the Federal Trade Commission. During…
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Questions for Janet Yellen
Even if it is nominally independent, the Federal Reserve is arguably the government’s most important agency. It has control over the price system, the most…
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Racial Preferences in Obamacare, and Discrimination, Too, Based on Weird Ideology
The Daily Caller has an interesting story about race-conscious provisions and racial preferences contained in Obamacare. It's a subject that has received remarkably little…
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An Alarmist Vocabulary: Chemical Is “Linked To,” “Study Suggests,” “Consistent With”
Headlines continue to appear to claiming that a recent study has shown that the chemical bisphenol A increases the risk of miscarriage, which I addressed…
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Racial Preferences and Red Tape Grow Under Federal Dodd-Frank Act
Last Friday on National Review's The Corner, Roger Clegg wrote about the 2010 law governing the financial sector, the Dodd-Frank Act, and the racial "diversity quotas"…
Letters
REINS Act coalition letter
We, the undersigned public interest organizations, write to urge you to support the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny Act of 2013 (the…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
78 new regulations, from energy-efficient urinals to interstate turtle requirements.
Fox News
The heavy price of regulations
Moreover, countless other federal, state, local and international regulatory authorities are busy interpreting, implementing and imposing rules under thousands of laws, ordinances and treaties. The…
News Release
Senate Action on $2 Trillion Gov’t Regulatory Burden Urgently Needed
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Regulatory reform is urgently needed to get our economy and businesses out of the doldrums, and there’s a House-passed bill that…
Blog
Contradictory Financial Regulations Cause Problems
It’s a case of “When Regulations Collide.” As we’ve seen in the energy field, contradictory regulations cost jobs as employers struggle to comply with…
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Glitches and Errors Widespread on Obamacare Health Insurance Website
In addition to the Obamacare web site glitches that left people unable to purchase insurance despite hours or days of trying, the website dramatically…
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Alcohol Crimes Decline in Washington After Liquor Sales Privatization
In the lead up to Washington State voters approving privatization of liquor sales in the state, opponents claimed—as they always do—that the increased availability and…
Blog
The Implications of Kludgeocracy
Steven Teles tells us in the fall issue of National Affairs that over the next decades, the challenge of "kludgeocracy" will come to the forefront of…
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More Bipartisan Opposition to Obama Administration’s Move to Block Airline Merger (Including Rahm Emanuel)
Another day, another round of public bipartisan opposition to the Obama Department of Justice’s lawsuit to block the pending American Airlines and US Airways merger.
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