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: 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…
Blog
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…
Blog
Trump executive order establishing a portal for regulatory dark matter
Even at the insistence of Congress in 2018, 46 federal agencies could only uncover only about 13,000 of their guidance documents and policy statements…
Search Posts
Study
The Case against Social Media Content Regulation
As repeatedly noted by most defenders of free speech, expressing popular opinions never needs protection. Rather, it is the commitment to protecting dissident expression that…
Blog
Six Ways the Trump Administration Has Reduced Regulation
Apart from sector-specific executive orders and directives to federal agencies, there are six prominent ways the Trump administration has streamlined regulation that were covered in…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
CEI released the 2020 edition of Wayne Crews’s annual Ten Thousand Commandments report, which gives a big-picture view of the federal regulatory state. Regulatory agencies…
Citation
Federal Regulations Cost an Estimated $1.9 Trillion per Year: Many Rules Hinder Virus Response, Economic Recovery
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) today released the 2020 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State (10KC 2020), CEI’s annual survey of…
The Wall Street Journal
The Incredible Shrinking Quorum
How can Congress do its work in a time of social distancing? The Senate has remained in session as usual, but the House took steps…
National Review
How Loosening Regulations Can Fight Coronavirus and Help the Economy
If a regulation isn’t needed during a crisis, it was probably never needed at all. To his credit, President Trump signed an executive order on May…
The Washington Times
Trump Behind on Promise to Cut Two Rules for Every New One, Study Shows
The Washington Times cites CEI’s 10kc report: The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual report on the cost of regulations found that Mr. Trump cut regulations…
The Federalist
New Report Exposes Onerous Overregulation From The Administrative State
The Federalist cites CEI’s 10kc report: A new report from the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) offers new insight into just how much unelected…
Blog
Out Now: The 2020 Edition of Ten Thousand Commandments
The 2020 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments is out. Wayne Crews’s annual report gives a big picture view of the federal regulatory state. There has…
The Federalist
Here Is A Catalog Of Trump’s Threats To Regulate Social Media
The major print and cable television news media outlets are abuzz with stories of Twitter fact-checking President Donald Trump’s tweets. Alleged…
Products
Liberate to Stimulate
Download Chapter 10 as PDF Policy makers frequently propose spending stimulus as a way to grow economies. It rarely goes well. A regulatory liberalization…
Products
Government Accountability Office Database on Regulations
Download Chapter 9 as a PDF The various federal reports and databases on regulations serve different purposes: The Federal Register shows the ag- gregate…
Products
Analysis of the Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations
View Full Document as PDF The Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions (Agenda) is the document where agencies outline…
News Release
Report: Trump Deregulation Proceeds, But Threatened by Trump Regulation
The Competitive Enterprise Institute issued a report today on the burden imposed by federal government regulations: Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory…
Products
Regulatory Dark Matter: Over 22,000 Public Notices Annually
Download Chapter 7 as a PDF Without actually passing a law, government can signal expectations, specify parameters for and influence various industries—including health care,…
Products
Regulatory Dark Matter: Presidential Executive Orders and Memoranda
Download Chapter 6 as a PDF Executive orders, presidential memoranda, and other executive actions make up a large component of executive “lawmaking.” They merit…
Products
Tens of Thousands of Pages and Rules in the Federal Register
Download Chapter 5 as a PDF The Federal Register is the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations.427 Although its…
Products
What Comes after “Trillion”? The Unknowable Costs of Regulation and Intervention
Download Chapter 4 as a PDF If real debt levels on the fiscal budget and entitlements can be vastly higher than the public is…
Products
Toward a Federal “Regulatory Budge”
Download Chapter 3 as a PDF When Congress spends, no one questions that disclosure is necessary for voters to hold representatives accountable. Federal expenditure…
Products
Swamp Things – Trump’s Discordant Regulatory Impulses Threaten to Derail His Successes and Expand the Administrative State
Download Chapter 2 as a PDF President Trump has pruned rules and costs and held down regulatory output with more enthusiasm than other presidents.146 Trump…
Products
9,999 Commandments? Six Ways Rule Flows Have Been Reduced or Streamlined
Download Chapter 1 as a PDF This edition of Ten Thousand Commandments begins with a survey of approaches the Trump administration took in its…
Study
Ten Thousand Commandments 2020 – Executive Summary
Download the Executive Summary as a PDF Spending control and deficit restraint are indispensable to a nation’s stability and long-term economic health. Yet alarm…
Study
Ten Thousand Commandments 2020
Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the size, scope, and cost of federal regulations, and how they affect American consumers,…
Blog
Trump’s Executive Order on #NeverNeeded Regulations
In an op-ed in National Review, CEI Senior Fellow Ryan Young takes a look at President Trump’s new Executive Order directing agencies to get rid…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Trump issued an Executive Order encouraging agencies to keep #NeverNeeded regulations waived during the coronavirus permanently off the books. Meanwhile, regulatory agencies issued new…
Blog
Trump Signs Executive Order to Spur Economic Recovery through Deregulation
President Donald Trump on May 19 signed an executive order titled, Regulatory Relief To Support Economic Recovery. The order gives cabinet secretaries and agency heads emergency powers to suspend or even eliminate regulations…
News Release
#NeverNeeded Regulation Report: Lift Regulations that Make Energy More Expensive
Lower-income households spend more of their budget on energy costs than more affluent ones, which is why regulations that increase the cost of energy have…
News Release
New Executive Order to Stimulate Recovery by Deregulating Builds on CEI’s #NeverNeeded Campaign
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) commended President Trump’s decision today to sign a new Executive Order directing cabinet members and agency heads to immediately identify…
Study
Lift #NeverNeeded Regulations that Make Energy More Expensive
Low-income households, which are more likely to suffer from unemployment and other stresses during the COVID-19 crisis, spend much more of their household budget on…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Retail sales declined 16.4 percent in April, setting a new record low for the second month in a row. Congress returned to Washington, putting the…
Citation
#NeverNeeded Regulation Report: White House Can Speed Up COVID-19 Recovery by Cutting Regulations without Congress
In a new paper released today, CEI Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews outlines several deregulatory measures the White House could take without Congress that…
Study
Pen, Phone, and Eraser?
There have now been several layers of congressional rescue-and-stimulus response to the coronavirus crisis, and there will be more “phases” to come. Given partisan discord,…
News Release
Congress Should Work With Trump Administration to Reduce Regulatory Barriers to COVID-19 Recovery
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced a proposed fourth COVID-19 recovery package that would spend roughly $3 trillion but contains no significant regulatory relief.
Study
Narrow the Focus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may well have taken their eye off the ball by…
The Wall Street Journal
Amazon’s Pandemic Success Story
There’s one bright spot in the dismal pandemic economy. Amazon is trying something that no company has attempted before: supplying the essential needs of 325 million Americans…
Youtube
VIDEO: Iain Murray Discusses #NeverNeeded Regulations and COVID-19
Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow Iain Murray joins Dana Loesch to discuss #neverneeded regulations and COVID-19…
The Epoch Times
Federal, State, and Local Governments Shed Over 170 Regulations to Fight Pandemic
The Epoch Times cites CEI on #neverneeded regulations: Even more regulations can be scrapped to empower American industry to help with the crisis,…
Bloomberg Law
Covid-19 Revives Debate over Economic Benefits of Deregulation
Bloomber Law cites Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow Iain Murray on #neverneeded regulations: Direct government aid won’t be enough to get…
CATO
Regulation after COVID-19
The CATO Institute cites CEI on #neverneeded regulations: Many of these regulations have no sound public justification whether in or outside of an…
The Federalist
South Africa’s Coronavirus Repression Signals Worse To Come
The Federalist cites CEI on #neverneeded regulations: Think tanks and researchers are working hard to shine a light on just how destructive artificial…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The first full week of May featured a continuing pandemic, the biggest unemployment increase in U.S. history, a hailstorm in the D.C. area, freezing temperatures…
The Federalist
A Proposed 13-Point Trump Agenda For Economic Stimulus By Reforming Regulation
I remembered wondering in 2017 whether the federal government would be larger or smaller after four years of Trump. We had our answer even before the…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2020 Federal Register passed 25,000 pages, and is poised to surpass last year’s page count by more than 1,000 pages. The number of final…
Blog
CEI Files New Challenge to the Administration’s Fuel Economy Standards
CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman discusses the issue with Walter Kreucher, one of the petitioners in the case, Walter Kreucher, a retired automotive engineer who…
Blog
The Economy after COVID-19 Will Be Different from Before, Part One
As governors begin to lift restrictions on economic activity, polling data show that Americans are generally still afraid of the virus and have changed their…
Blog
Like the Sun Not Rising in the East?
The Federal Register, the official daily government publication of regulations, proposed rules, and similar items did not go online today. We were awaiting today’s Federal…
Blog
The Coronavirus Outbreak Highlights Importance of the Artificial Intelligence Debate
Tracing of individuals and other measures involving artificial intelligence are in the news with respect to managing individuals’ reentry into the economy in the wake…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
New unemployment applications were down to 4.4 million last week. This is still more than an order of magnitude greater than the pre-coronavirus record. With…
Blog
DEREGULATION IN AN EMERGENCY: The President’s Emergency Powers Include Not Just Imposing Regulations on Industry, but also Suspending Regulations
Across the country, governors have suspended harmful regulations on an emergency basis due to the COVID-19 crisis. The improvements that have resulted have got people…
Blog
Congress Has Already Introduced Bills to Reform #NeverNeeded Regulations
Policy makers have already waived more than 350 regulations and counting that were slowing the pandemic response and harming economic recovery. But with a 185,000-page…
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