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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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…
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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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Richmond Times Dispatch
Fuel-Economy Standards Need a Warning Label
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Costs and Benefits of Regulation
One of the major developments in regulation over the last 30 years has been the rise of cost-benefit analysis. At first, agencies squirmed and resisted.
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An Economic Paradox: SelectUSA, Government’s Expansion, and Private-Sector Growth
President Obama signed an executive order on June 15 to create SelectUSA, a new bureaucracy that acts as a one-stop-shop for government subsidies, in the…
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Tyranny in Farmville
Two days ago, the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog filed an anti-trust complaint with the FTC seeking an investigation of Facebook’s allegedly anti-competitive practices. These…
Richmond Times Dispatch
The USDA’s Anti-Science Activism
Full Document Available in PDF U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack must…
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Farm Workers Win in California
Late last night Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the California farm workers “card check” bill SB 104 for. The bill would have abolished workers right to…
Staff & Scholars
Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
- Business and Government
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Ryan Young
Senior Economist
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Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Founder; Chairman Emeritus
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- Aviation
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Sam Kazman
Counsel Emeritus
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Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Senior Fellow
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