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
The week in regulations: Deepwater port licenses and nuclear credit ratings
Voters made known their feelings about tariffs, gas prices, and corruption. The FAA announced that it still uses floppy disks for air traffic control…
Blog
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…
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CEI Planet
TARP Transparency: A Good Start, but Not Enough
Herbert Allison is President Obama’s newly-confirmed head of the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Stability. On Thursday, June 25, he promised to “emphasize transparency so…
Blog
All Community Organizing Is Astroturfing – And That’s Fine!
The fact that members of Congress extolling the president’s plan are attacking astroturfers while leaving their arguments alone says to me that the Congressmen believe…
Blog
“Millions of jobs are at stake on both sides of the border”
So says British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell. At a meeting of Canada’s provincial premiers held in Regina, Saskatchewan, last week, slapping retaliatory tariffs on…
Newsletter
EU Antitrust Rebuke, Record Deficit Numbers and the Costs of Global Warming Policy
European competition regulators get chastised for hiding evidence in a case against Intel. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the federal…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 29: Protecting Us from Cheap Foreign Goods
Sometimes (but not always), when a foreign producer sells goods to U.S. consumers cheaply, the U.S. government takes action to put a stop to it.
News Release
CEI Proposes Legalizing Horse Meat Sale
A Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington, D.C. and Tallahassee, proposes a simple solution to the spate…
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