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
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Taxing the rich with Jared Walczak
In this week’s episode we cover America’s low-income churn, reforms to civil asset forfeiture, changes to vehicle emissions testing, a shout…
Blog
The week in regulations: Bone void filler and halibut action
May’s job numbers were strong for the third month in a row, though job growth since Liberation Day remains under 100,000, for a labor force…
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Free the Economy podcast: State budgets and bailouts with Thomas Savidge
In this week’s episode we cover promising new classroom technology, increasing productivity (and avoiding layoffs) with AI, and the repeal of the…
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The Washington Times
Impact of Trump’s 646 deregulatory actions diluted by tariffs, executive orders
The Washington Times cites CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews on the release of his new report, the 2026 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments. Report author Clyde Wayne…
News Release
Report: Regulations cost $2 trillion annually, but only Congress can fix the problem
The Competitive Enterprise Institute today released its annual report documenting the vast burden that federal regulations impose on American businesses and citizens. “Government regulations continue to cost Americans more…
Products
Chapter 13: Getting things undone: An agenda for rightsizing Washington
We close with an appeal to restore enumerated powers. This would solve the overregulation dilemma, and would have prevented it in the first place. Reforms…
Products
Chapter 7: Unified Agenda of regulatory actions
Along with the Report to Congress, the Federal Register, and the Code of Federal Regulations, another vehicle for regulatory disclosure is the spring and fall…
Products
Chapter 5: Over 19,000 agency public notices annually
Presidents issue a few dozen memoranda and other proclamations each year. Departments and agencies, however, issue thousands of public notices in the Federal Register every…
Products
Chapter 4: Regulatory dark matter
Although executive actions are typically understood to deal with the internal operations of the federal government, they increasingly can have binding effects and influence private…
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