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
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…
Blog
The week in regulations: Space modernization and closed captioning
Sir Patrick Stewart passed away at age 86. GDP growth came in higher than average for the third quarter, but so did September’s PCE…
Search Posts
Reason
Yes, Romney and Obama, Government Regulation Encourages Outsourcing
Last month, CEI's Wayne Crews told the House Judiciary Committee: “For the broader ‘significant’ category of rules (economically significant rules plus rules considered officially significant…
US News
Red Tape Is Strangling the Recovery
Last year alone, federal agencies issued 3,807 final rules according to data compiled by Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Blog
Of Mice, Mushrooms, And Formaldehyde
According to New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, the chemical industry is engaged in a grand conspiracy to hide the fact your kitchen cabinets…
Blog
Dodd-Frank’s Democratic Dissenters — From Brian Schweitzer To Debbie Wasserman Schultz
"For some reason, some Republicans in Congress are still waging an all-out battle to delay, defund and dismantle these commonsense new rules." That was, in…
US News
Is U.S. Economic Growth Over?
[E]stimates of how economically burdensome the regulatory state is range from the Obama administration lowball estimate of a mere $67 billion [PDF] annually to the…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation
38 new regulations, from amateur rocket operations to the definition of “night.”…
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