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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Do more deregulation in debt limit deal
The internal GOP debate this week is over lower-case “d” default if a June 6 deadline for an increase in the debt limit is…
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Free the Economy podcast: Transparency for government, privacy for people with Brian Hawkins
In this week’s episode we talk discuss Tim Carney’s view on why big government is good for big business, Stone Washington on the…
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Let’s get this huge ‘hidden tax’ of regulation out into the open
Smack dab in the middle of contentious debt limit negotiations, the House Budget Committee held another in its series of hearings on American economic growth,…
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Chapter 6: Another Dimension of Regulatory Dark Matter: Over 21,000 Agency Public Notices Annually
Along with presidential proclamations are those of departments and agencies. Without actually passing a law, government can signal expectations, specify parameters for, and influence…
Publication
Chapter 1: Biden’s Regulatory “Modernization” Expanding Government Affirms the Unworkability of Administrative State Rule
Where recent editions of Ten Thousand Commandments began by surveying of approaches the Trump administration took to streamline red tape as well as of Trump’s…
Publication
Chapter 2: Beyond a Federal “Regulatory Budget”
Federal programs get funded either by taxes or by borrowing against a promise to repay with interest from future tax collections. When Congress spends, no…
Publication
Chapter 5: The Presidential Dimension of Regulatory Dark Matter: Executive Orders and Memoranda
Executive orders, presidential memoranda, and other executive actions make up a large component of executive “lawmaking.” They merit attention from lawmakers, since they can have,…
Publication
Chapter 3: What Comes after “Trillion”? The Unknowable Costs of Regulation and Intervention
The cumulative high end for costs in the three recent fiscal years is around $4.6 billion, compared to around $105 billion for the prior 10…
Publication
Chapter 4: Tens of Thousands of Pages and Rules in the Federal Register
The Federal Register is the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations. Although its number of pages 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