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 logbook of federal red tape last year came to…
The Federal Register for 2024 closed out Joe Biden’s final year in office with a record 106,109 pages. This count swamps the previous record of…

Blog
The week in regulations: Farmer training and approving fireworks
Tuesday’s Federal Register contained 105 proposed regulations and 86 final regulations. Much of it was regulatory cleanup for railroads, pipelines, and mining. The reconciliation bill…

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The year the red tape died? Trump’s 2025 rule count hits historic lows
At the halfway point of 2025, the federal regulatory machinery is running at an unprecedented crawl. That’s good news. As tracked annually in my…
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Op-Eds
Global Tax; or Global Tax Reform?
Am I the only one who noticed that the Kyoto Protocol (imposing artificial constraints on energy use to regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide to…
News Release
UN Sea Treaty Brings ‘Tragedy of the Commons’
Contact for Interviews: <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273 …
Study
The Price is Right—Or Better Be!
Full Document Available in PDF On the popular television game show “The…
Op-Eds
New Agenda Fails to Address Problems
George Bernard Shaw once observed that: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the…
Op-Eds
Red & Green: Is the President Cutting Enough Environmental Fat?
If you believe the rhetoric from environmental activists about the Bush-administration budget, you would think that the world would come to an end if…
News Release
Bush Budget Missteps On Energy, Environment, Regulatory Reform
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Contact for Interviews: Christine Hall, 202.331.2258, or Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273…
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