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
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…
Blog
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”…
Search Posts
Blog
Chuck Schumer: “We’ve Got to Stand Still”
High-frequency stock trading — the markets where sophisticated algorithms running on bleeding edge hardware trade assets using information only fractions of a second old —…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 25: Cattle with Scabies
If you own cattle and they are at risk of catching scabies, you may want to read up on the pertinent federal regulations. There are…
Blog
End the Letter Delivery Monopoly: Sell The USPS
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion…
Blog
FDA to Smokers: Drop Dead
The FDA is now moving towards banning a smoking alternative that could save many lives. Every year, millions of smokers like my wife try…
Blog
The Antitrust Anachronism
Wall Street Journal columnist Gordon Crovitz has a great column in today's paper on the anachronism that is antitrust law. He writes: "Markets were so…
Blog
Newsflash to FCC: The iPhone is a Closed Platform, and Consumers Love It
Just when you thought the FCC’s investigation of the wireless industry couldn’t get any stranger, TechCrunch reports that the Commission has sent letters…
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