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
Study
The Environment, the Law, Markets, and the Path Forward
Introduction The Pharos Foundation at Jesus College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, invited me to speak at an on-campus forum in May.
Blog
Abolish, shuffle, repeat: The SOTU’s ill omen for federal retrenchment
Shrinking the federal government and abolishing agencies sounds simple — decisive, even. In practice, however, it appears neither can be done under modern administrative-…
Blog
Trump’s SOTU conundrum: Deregulation today, swamp tomorrow?
Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union (SOTU) address presents an opportunity to confront the federal spending, entitlement, and regulatory behemoth in a new way…
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News Release
CEI Supports Regulatory Integrity Act and the SCRUB Act
This week, the U.S. House of Representatives is slated to vote on H.R. 1004, the Regulatory Integrity Act, introduced by Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI), and…
Blog
White House Bets on Regulatory Reform to Kickstart Job Growth
This afternoon President Trump signed a new executive order titled “Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda” with the goal of spurring economic growth and job creation.
Blog
Policy Background on Trump’s Joint-Session Address to Congress
Here are five areas where the administration has the opportunity to implement valuable and much-needed reforms for the American people.
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
As with the previous few weeks, many of this week’s regulations were simply delays of previous rules.
National Review
It’s Time to Shine a Light on Regulatory ‘Dark Matter’
Regulation is not the only way the federal bureaucracy inhibits innovation. President Donald Trump’s desire to shrink the regulatory state by significantly cutting the number…
Washington Examiner
Trump’s economic transformation is only getting started
Washington Examiner highlights Wayne Crews’s calculated cost of federal regulations. One of the main reasons why the Obama economy has limped along, year…
Staff & Scholars
Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation
Ryan Young
Senior Economist and Director of Publications
- 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