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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Ruling Striking Down Health Care Law Was Not “Judicial Activism”
On Monday, a federal judge in Florida struck down Obamacare as unconstitutional. Judge Vinson concluded that the law’s cornerstone — a requirement that…
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Senate Repeals Obamacare’s 1099 Mandate — OTC Drug Rules Should be Next
Although the U.S. Senate voted along partisan lines to defeat repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare —…
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Morning Media Summary
Tech: News Corp. Launches Digital Daily: “News Corp. on Wednesday unveiled The Daily, a tablet newspaper that Chairman Rupert Murdoch described as “the…
Op-Eds
Leviathan
How many Americans work in government? That’s a difficult question to answer. Officially, as of 2009, the federal government employed 2.8 million individuals out of…
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Thomas Sowell on the Value of Consumer Choice
One of Thomas Sowell’s greatest insights is that in public policy, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. That extends to deciding what to spend money…
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Suspend Obamacare’s 1099 and OTC Drug Rules Pending Supreme Court Action
Monday’s decision by Florida federal judge Roger Vinson striking down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — in its…
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
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Sam Kazman
Counsel Emeritus
- Antitrust
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Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Senior Fellow
- Climate
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- Energy and Environment