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
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The week in regulations: CAFE standards and Christmas tree promotions
Israel launched a military strike against Iran. US Senator Alex Padilla was detained for trying to ask a question at a Department of Homeland Security…
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Congress should deregulate if it will not tackle entitlement spending
The Senate is currently reviewing the House version of the One Big Beautiful Bill in an effort to have President Trump sign the bill into…
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Your family’s share of federal red tape last year was…
Most people can see taxes on their pay stubs, but there’s another sort of tax that’s much less visible: the cost of government regulations. These…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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Union Recalcitrance on Race Relations
Recent events have exposed unions’ troglodytic views on race relations. Basically, unions seek to preserve the current racial makeup of their workforce, regardless of changes…
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CEI Podcast for April 12, 2012: Apple, E-Books, and Antitrust
Yesterday the Justice Department sued Apple and five major publishers over their e-book pricing model, alleging price fixing. Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia…
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Competition in Water Infrastructure
Today, CEI released a report on how increased competition could make a big difference in the cost to taxpayers for upgrading water infrastructure.
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A Free Market Defense of Retransmission Consent
Unshackling a market from obsolete, protectionist regulations can be a very challenging undertaking, especially when the lifeblood of a regulated industry is at stake. The…
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Why Matt Taibbi’s Anti-JOBS Act Screed Couldn’t Suck Worse
I have had a range of reactions when reading Matt Taibbi's pieces in Rolling Stone. Most of the time, I vehemently shake my head, but quite a few times…
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San Francisco Judge Dismisses Lawsuit against McDonald’s over Happy Meals
"In San Francisco, Judge Richard Kramer has dismissed the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s lawsuit on behalf of parent Monet Parham seeking to…
Citation
When Will We Learn Lessons of Big Government?
From Lawrence Reed’s article in The Times-Herald: The Obama administration is jamming new regulations down the throats of businesses big and small at…
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Grow Economy by Cutting Law School Subsidies
The economy remains slow, recovering from the recession at an unusually low rate, partly due to economically-harmful Obama administration policies. "U.S. stocks fell, dragging…
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Regulation of the Day 217: Being Rude
The mayor of La Torba, Spain recently issued a 65-point Courtesy Charter making it illegal to burp in public or slurp your soup, among other…
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Further Space Property Rights Responses
Since my previous post on media reaction to CEI's press briefing on Thursday, Popular Science has provided a…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
A new Prison Bureau regulation allows inmates to publish under their own name as of May 3, plus more.
Op-Eds
Free-Market Environmentalism? It’ll Never Fly, Orville!
The week before Easter I gave a brief speech at the Association for Private Enterprise Education, a foundation dedicated to assembling scholars, professors and students…
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Regulation Roundup
Public school bans a 3-year old with cerebral palsy from using her walker at school, plus more.
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Live Streaming at 11:00 AM EDT — Securing Property Rights in Space
On Thursday, April 5, the Competitive Enterprise Institute will host a Capitol Hill briefing to introduce a new study by Adjunct Scholar Rand…
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Public Choice: A Primer
The good folks at the London-based Institute for Economic Affairs have just released an excellent book by Eammon Butler, Public Choice: A Primer.
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Multiemployer Pensions, the Tragedy of the Commons, and the “Last Man Standing” Rule
The “tragedy of the commons,” as described by the late ecologist Garrett Hardin, generally refers to the depletion of a finite resource caused by…
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Economic “Recovery” Is Slow and Weak Due to Obama Administration Policies
Typically, after the economy suffers an unusually severe recession, it bounces back in an unusually rapid recovery -- what some economists and others refer to…
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Regulation of the Day 216: Selling Ice Cream to Kids
A group of parents in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood want to ban ice cream vendors from parks. One parent wrote, “I should not have to…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
2,191 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register last week, for a total of 19,487 pages. At this pace, the 2012 Federal Register…
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TSA Trifecta
First, a TSA manager at Dulles airport has been arrested for running a prostitution ring. Second, two Miami TSA employees were arrested for trashing a…
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Obamacare: Constitutionality Argument Misses the Point Entirely
Conservatives are ebullient over the unexpected hostility and skepticism the government's lawyers faced from the Supreme Court Justices over the three days of hearings on…
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No to Broccoli Mandate, Yes to Health Insurance Mandate?
Over at the Daily Caller, I go over some possible explanations for the different results and conclude:…
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Obamacare Harms State Finances, Imposes Unfunded Mandates, Drives Up State Budget Deficits; Even Democrats Criticize Provisions
While public attention has focused on Obamacare's unconstitutional "individual mandate," challenged yesterday in oral arguments at the Supreme Court, other parts of the health…
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The FCC’s Concern for Competitors, not Competition
Last week, the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee held a hearing on Verizon Wireless’s proposed purchase of spectrum from Cox Wireless and SpectrumCo. The spectrum…
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Congressional Blowout Over Cosmetics Law Reform
Today, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health held a hearing on cosmetics regulation to consider whether Congress should beef up federal…
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Regulation of the Day 215: TacoCopter
A group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs has found a peaceful use for unmanned attack drones that almost everyone can support: delivering food to hungry people.
Forbes
Ma Bell’s Long Legacy of Unsustainable Pensions Is Alive and Well
“Communism,” comedian Lenny Bruce once quipped, “is like one big phone company.” This dated joke refers to the monolithic phone company known as “Ma Bell,”…
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Supreme Court Begins Hearing Challenges to Unconstitutional Obamacare Provisions
At CNN, George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin explains why Obamacare's requirement that individuals buy health insurance is beyond Congress's power…
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The $400 Pizza
The reason it cost $400 was not because of restaurant business practices but because of television labor practices.
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Department of Labor Companionship Rule Doesn’t Comply with Best Practices
Last Wednesday, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator Cass Sunstein sent a memo to executive agency heads concerning the cumulative effects of…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
75 new final rules were published last week, up from 72 the previous week. That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and…
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Agricultural Innovation in the 21st Century: CEI on Capitol Hill
On Monday, I’ll be speaking at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by Americans for Choice and Competition in Agriculture, which also…
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Yes, the JOBS Act Will Create Jobs, Wealth, and Investor Freedom
Tomorrow, the Senate is expected to pass the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. The bill achieved cloture today by 76 votes, all but assuring…
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ThinkProgress’ Schizophrenia on Crowdfunding and the JOBS Act
ThinkProgress, the blogging arm of the liberal Center for American Progress, is usually pretty good on enforcing the political left’s party line. But two of…
Forbes
Why Regulations Aren’t Good–Again
The first week of Spring is also “hooray, regulation” week at the White House. Regulatory policy chief Cass Sunstein, one of the most accomplished and…
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Human Achievement of the Day: Mind-Controlled Prostheses
A breakthrough by researchers at Northwestern University is giving hope to millions of amputees that they might eventually regain some of the ability they…
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A Bad Economy’s Silver Lining
The Economist hits the nail on the head — albeit a nail that has been well hit by many in the free market movement already.
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Regulation of the Day 214: Flipping the Bird
Steven Pogue, 64, was cited by police for flipping the bird while driving in Ballwin, Missouri. He was exonerated on free speech grounds, and the…
Forbes
EDITORIAL: Obama’s Bogus Rules
From a Washington Times editorial: The scope of federal rule-making is bewildering. More than 700 new final rules have been published this year,…
News Release
OMB Guidance on Cost of Federal Regulation “Inadequate”
Washington, D.C., March 20, 2012—Today, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the White House Office of Management and Budget released guidance to agencies…
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Regulation of the Day 213: Dying
Falciano del Massico, a small town in Italy, has banned its 4,000 residents from dying because the local cemetery is completely full.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Defense Department is still implementing parts of the Privacy Act of 1974, plus more.
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EPA’s Toxic “Negotiation”
It's pretty amazing when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can essentially use extortion as a negotiating tool, and industry casts it as a plea…
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House Should Reject Senate Highway Bill, Move for Another SAFETEA-LU Extension
Just before 1pm today, the Senate passed its surface transportation reauthorization bill, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21, S. 1813). MAP-21…
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Juvenal Delinquents
There are more regulatory reform ideas out there than you can shake a stick at. Some, of course, are better than others.
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