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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Free the Economy podcast: Consumer protection and free speech with Casey Mattox
In this week’s episode we cover the debt load of state and local governments, advances in nuclear waste storage, and hope…
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…
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Time for Big Cuts in Education Spending?
America spends far more on education than countries like Germany, Japan, Australia, Ireland, and Italy, both as a percentage of its economy, and in absolute…
Op-Eds
For the TSA, all risks are created equal
John Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, recently told The Atlantic in an interview that “we’ll never eliminate risk” of terrorist attacks on…
Citation
Debit Card Restrictions Bad News for Consumers
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Morning Media Summary
Tech: Skype Outage hits users worldwide: “Millions of Skype Internet phone users worldwide couldn’t make calls — or were dropped in mid-conversation —…
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FCC Net Neutrality: Some Networks are More Neutral than Others
Today’s decision [by FCC bureaucrats] will help preserve the free and open nature of the Internet [as defined by the government] while encouraging innovation [as…
Blog
The Obama Administration’s Misguided War on For-Profit Colleges
In Forbes, economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University documents the blunders behind the Obama administration’s war on for-profit colleges that wiped out $8 billion…
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
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Sam Kazman
Counsel Emeritus
- Antitrust
- Automobiles and Roads
- Banking and Finance
Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Senior Fellow
- Climate
- Energy
- Energy and Environment