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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Blog
Congress should heed GAO’s new regulatory reform recommendations
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a December 2023 report titled “Options for Enhancing Congressional Oversight of Rulemaking and Establishing an Office of Legal…
News Release
Report: Federal Regulatory Agencies Abuse Power with Guidance Documents
A new report by Competitive Enterprise Institute and Paragon Health Institute scholar Dr. Joel Zinberg, Restoring Good Guidance Practices: How to restrain the administrative…
Study
Restoring Good Guidance Practices
Executive summary Federal agency guidance documents form a large and expanding part of the administrative state’s regulatory universe. These informal documents including memoranda, bulletins, and…
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Op-Eds
A Tremendously Costly Law
Early this year, an unusual full-page ad appeared in the Wall Street Journal and other financial newspapers. The ad attempted to refute claims from businessmen…
Products
A Case of Wine for the Supreme Court
Full Document Available in PDF On December 7, the United…
Products
The Drug Reimportation Controversy
As policy battles go, the drug reimportation debate is an unusual one. On its face, the federal ban on reimporting pharmaceuticals appears to violate the…
CEI Planet
February/ March Issue of CEI’s Monthly Planet
Full Document Available in PDF Featured in the February/March Issue of the…
News Release
A Solution to the Grokster Copyright Debate?
Contact for Interviews: <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273 <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns…
News Release
Reviving Real Regulatory Reform
Full Document Available in PDF Washington, D.C., March 24, 2005—Congress and the President, now more than…
Staff & Scholars
Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
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Ryan Young
Senior Economist
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Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Founder; Chairman Emeritus
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Sam Kazman
Counsel Emeritus
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Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Senior Fellow
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