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

Forbes
The “Guidance Out Of Darkness Act” Is The Low-Hanging Fruit Of Regulatory Reform
We often marvel that we don’t actually know how many federal agencies exist. And the number of “commissions” and programs (many expired…

News Release
Senator Ron Johnson and 15 GOP Colleagues Introduce Guidance Out of Darkness Act in 118th Congress
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act this week, a bill aimed at bringing transparency to agency guidance documents…

Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Biden released a $6.8 trillion proposed budget. The labor force grew by 311,000 people in February. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging…
Search Posts
Op-Eds
An Antitrust Division Run Amok (Letter to the Editor)
I would have happily signed a letter urging a cap on the Depart ment of Justice’s Antitrust Division budget if I’d been asked [`Hardball and Windows,” op-ed, Oct.
News Release
Shadow Insurance Committee to Meet October 25 to Review Catastrophe Insurance Financing & Redlining Issues
Washington, D.C., October 22, 1999 – The Shadow Insurance Regulation Committee will hold its second meeting of the year at 12 noon on October…
Op-Eds
New Pricing Plans Are Good
This isn’t your father’s telecommunications market. Long-distance pricing was once onesize-fits-all, with high, distance-sensitive rates cast in stone by regulators. Now that is changing, as…
Op-Eds
Tyranny of the Unelected Regulators
Congress passed and the president signed into law 241 bills in 1998. Meanwhile, federal agencies were far busier: They issued 4,899 rules and regulations — 315…
Washington Times
Unchecked Regulatory Creep
Washington Times
Feeding the Green Money Tree
The Clinton-Gore administration continues to thumb it nose at the Constitution by trying to implement a global warming treaty (the Kyoto Protocol) that has not…
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