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
Regulatory Reform in the 118th Congress: Separation of Powers Restoration Act
The separation of powers is a key aspect of American government. To decentralize power and ensure checks and balances, the Founders divided the federal government…
City Journal
Roll It Back
Medicaid, the federal-state entitlement for the poor, now provides health insurance to more than one in four Americans. Enrollments surged after the Affordable Care Act…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
An Executive Order from the Biden administration made some of the biggest system-level regulatory changes in years. It raises the threshold for “economically significant”…
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CEI Podcast for April 19, 2012: Right to Work Laws and Compelled Speech
Indiana is becoming a right to work state, which means unions will no longer be able to force workers who don't want their representation to…
Blog
FDR on FDIC
Robert Samuelson’s column (April 8, 2012) discussing President Franklin Roosevelt’s reservations about the longer term implications of Social Security should not be surprising. In…
Blog
How to Fix U.S. Water Policy? Less Government, More Market Pricing
Late last week I received an invitation to testify in the Water and Power Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Natural…
Comment
Testimony on Reauthorization of Water Desalination Act of 2011
Full Document Available in PDF Separation of State and Water Water availability is a core infrastructure concern; today, that specific legislative…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 218: Bagpipes
Street musicians were recently banned from playing bagpipes in Vancouver, British Columbia. Just in time for the city’s Scotland Week celebration, Mayor Gregor Robertson happily…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
77 new regulations were published last week, the Federal Register grew by 1,475 pages, and the federal government is liberalizing its golden nematode policy.
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