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
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Consumer protection and free speech with Casey Mattox
In this week’s episode we cover the debt load of state and local governments, advances in nuclear waste storage, and hope…
News Release
Update in CEI’s case against Wisconsin’s unconstitutional rule barring voter participation in prediction markets
Yesterday, a District Court denied CEI’s motion for a preliminary injunction against Wisconsin’s rule denying voters the right to participate in election prediction market…
Blog
The regulatory dark matter beyond Washington’s graveyard of rules: 83,141 ghosts and counting
The clocks have turned back, the days are growing darker, and Washington’s regulatory shadows lengthen. Washington’s policy ghouls are waking up to the fact…
Search Posts
Forbes
The Only Way Trump’s Washington Can Be Smaller In Four Years
There are now several moving and overlapping parts to President Donald Trump’s streamlining, swamp-draining, “deconstruction of the administrative state” agenda. Last week brought Office…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2017 Federal Register had another sub-thousand page week, though it is still already more than 18,000 pages long.
Blog
In Wake of United Debacle, Give Airlines – and Travelers – More Flexibility
Most of the time it’s actually government policies that end up ruining a traveler’s day.
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Things remain slow on the regulatory front, with a large chunk of new rules being routine safety-zone and drawbridge scheduling regulations from the Coast Guard.
Blog
National Security Is No Argument against Regulatory Reform
On the Lawfare blog, Professor Ganesh Sitaraman of Vanderbilt Law School and the Center for American Progress offers an argument about regulatory reform that…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
There were 63 final regulations and 28 proposed regulations last week, but again, few of them amounted to much. We’ll have more to say on…
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