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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Federal Register Hits 50,000 Pages
And it's on pace to hit a near-record 80,447 pages.
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Radical Capitalism: A Noble Experiment We Ought to Try
Earlier this month, Bloomberg published an article by Boston University economist Larry Kotlikoff in which he declared that the U.S. was bankrupt and headed…
AOL News
The FDA’s Deadly Overcaution
In the past two months, there've been news accounts of two major diagnostic advances in medicine. One involves a far more efficient HIV detection…
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Regulation of the Day 146: Airplane Child Seats
The NTSB wants to throw away 50 lives to save an estimated 1 or 2 lives.
Blog
Yandle: Everyman’s Deficit
Clemson University economist Bruce Yandle has published a new paper that compares the federal government’s spending habits with that of the average family. Yandle…
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The Dangerous Minds of Urban Planners
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo v. New London decision, significant attention has been paid to the way government interacts in the property…
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