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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Green Pork
In addition to tens of billions of dollars in the House stimulus bill for infrastructure and other projects to create jobs, there are also funding…
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Apparent Hold on Solis Nomination
The confirmation of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as Labor Secretary has run into an unexpected delay, as an unidentified Republican senator appears to have…
News Release
CEI Unveils Agenda for Congress
Washington, D.C., January 26, 2009—With the incoming Obama administration and the opening of the new Congress, the House and Senate are…
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Consumer Product Safety Law Backfires, Killing Thousands of Jobs
A consumer-product safety law recently passed by Congress will drive up the price of children’s clothes and toys and put thousands of small toymakers…
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Regulating Our Way to Recovery
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Tucked in the massive stimulus bill passed by the House Appropriation Committee is a $4.5 billion appropriation for…
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TV Transition follies: Plaguing consumers then and now.
Looks like the “digital television transition” to abandon analog and make high-definition broadcasts the standard is not going to happen as planned, but is…
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