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
America 250 election year rightsizing: Time to get things undone
The new 2026 Ten Thousand Commandments survey of federal regulation and reform landed at an awkward moment. Election cycles tend to crowd out serious thinking…
Blog
The week in regulations: Date taxes and microreactors
It was nearly a 3,000-page week in the Federal Register, roughly double the usual pace. Year-over-year inflation jumped to 3.8 percent, the worst reading since…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Pension politics with Jarrett Skorup
In this week’s episode we cover more legal headaches for the Trump tariffs, keeping kids safe in an AI world, and California’s…
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Study
Threats to Competitiveness in a Political Environment
Full Document Available in PDF This essay may seem depressing, but…
Op-Eds
The Fight For Telecom Reform
Full document available in pdf format<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> There’s good news and bad news in the wonky…
Op-Eds
Margaret Thatcher: A Free Market Environmentalist
Full document available in pdf format <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Tracy Mehan’s account of Margaret…
News Release
New Book Challenges Activist Attack on Business, Personal Prosperity
Contact for Interviews: Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273 Washington, D.C., November 19, 2004—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is proud to announce the publication…
Study
The Role of Business in the Modern World: Progress, Pressures and Prospects for the Market Economy
Foreward, acknowledgments, and…
Op-Eds
Making the Desert Bloom
There is big news from the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Middle East that is unusual in several ways: It's positive,…
Products
Nick Gillespie Q&A in the October Issue of CEI’s Monthly Planet
Full Document Available in PDF …
Study
1984-2004: CEI’s 20 Year Report
Full Document Available in PDF A Message from the President CEI is…
Op-Eds
Stock Option Expense Jousting
After hearing constant tirades about <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />U.S. foreign policy offending “the world,” a majority of American voters…
Op-Eds
Health, Wealth and Happiness
How do we know when we’re happy? Strange as it may seem, this philosophical question could come back to haunt you one April 15. Psychologists…
Op-Eds
Vaccine Development Needs a Booster Shot
Every year in this country influenza kills tens of thousands and hospitalizes about a quarter-million. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />…
Op-Eds
Medicine Could Reach For Stars, FDA Willing
When Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in 1975, they shot for the stars and succeeded. More recently, Allen shot for the stars again.
News Release
FDA-Tobacco Regulation No Public Service
Contact: Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273 Washington, DC, October 6, 2004—A Senate-passed plan for increasing the federal government’s regulation of…
CEI Planet
CEI Planet: September 2004
Full Document Available in PDF Tech Regulation Done Right, by Braden Cox…
News Release
Threat to Tech Innovation in Senate
Contact for Interviews: <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273 <?xml:namespace prefix…
Op-Eds
Back to School for Pests
As students return to school this fall, parents will again worry about new illnesses as kids come in contact with more cold and…
Op-Eds
Taking the Scare Out of Biotech Crops
In the late 1990s, political scientist Gregory Conko had been studying food and pharmaceutical regulation as a fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute,…
Op-Eds
Eco-Fascism Going Global
Full text available as pdf<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> We can say this for environmental…
Op-Eds
Antitrust: Sherman’s March Across the Globe
President Bush’s bipartisan Antitrust Modernization Commission held its first meeting in July. But after 114 years, America’s antitrust regulatory regime is overdue for burial, not…
Op-Eds
Lessons from the Gas Price Spike
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Labor Day weekend marked the end of summer and its high seasonal demand…
Products
CEI Planet: September 2004
Full document available as a pdf. Tort Law “to Make Law,” by Ivan Osorio and Elizabeth Jones …
Products
Nanotech’s Choice: Pork or Innovation?
Products
Conflicting with Reality: Or, Scientists are Human, Too
Full Document Available in PDF Former New England Journal of…
Products
Tort Law “to Make Law”
Full Document Available in PDF A recent little-noticed New York Times story says…
Op-Eds
Conflicting with Reality
Former New England Journal of Medicine editor Jerome Kassirer, in an August 1 Washington Post op-ed, argues that conflicts of interest in medical…
Op-Eds
Fear Factor
Environmental activists seeking to halt the worldwide spread of the advanced technologies they fear see <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />China…
Op-Eds
Obesity: a Sign We’re Doing Things Right
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson recently designated obesity a disease, with all the negative implications that entails. Our society, crippled, it seems,…
Op-Eds
Bookshelf: Fighting Disease Is Only Half the Battle
As a fresh-faced medical intern, a colleague of mine once greeted a new patient with a breezy, “So what’s your problem?” “Oh, just a touch…
Op-Eds
California Wine vs. Two-Legged Pests
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />California is under attack by parasites, of both the six-legged and two-legged variety. The former are…
Op-Eds
Tort Law ‘to Make Law’
A recent little-noticed New York Times story says a great deal about <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />America's current legal climate:…
Op-Eds
RFID Tags and Privacy
Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology promises many consumer benefits. With RFID, goods on trucks, in trains, and in warehouses can be inventoried without unloading…
Op-Eds
Wave of Regulations Will Follow Tsunami of Federal Spending
On top of the $2 trillion in tax revenues the government now collects, agencies issue more than 4,000 yearly regulations. Costing some $800 billion annually, regulations…
Study
Send Me No Files: Senate INDUCEs a Threat to the Future of Information Technology
Please copy and share this article, download some music files, and photocopy your favorite chapters from Bill Clinton’s new book. It’s fun: Just do it!…
Op-Eds
Reformers are too Willing to Turn a Blind Eye to Liberal Fixes for our Economic Problems
Sirs, Your edition of July 6 features two distinct columns that demonstrate a persistent neglect of economic liberalisation as a way of resolving societal…
Study
Spitzer Strains out Grasso While Swallowing Camels
Full Document Available in PDF Recently, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer…
Products
A More Creative and Productive World
Full Document Available in PDF I’m grateful to all of you for…
Products
Ronald Reagan, Freedom’s Champion
Full Document Available in PDF Former President Ronald Reagan’s passing has prompted innumerable words about…
Products
June Edition of CEI’s Monthly Planet
Full Document Available in PDF “A More Creative and Productive…
Op-Eds
Split Decision at the SEC
Nobel Prize economist Ronald Coase long ago warned of a political risk—that of wishing to be an “economic statesman,” which he defined as a person…
News Release
SEC Set To Over-Regulate Mutual Fund Industry With Vote on June 23
***MEDIA ADVISORY***<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> SEC Set To Over-Regulate Mutual Fund…
News Release
Ad Schemes Bring Retailers Bad Publicity
News Release
Keeping Busy: Federal Regulators Issued Over 4,000 Rules in 2003
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Washington, DC, June 16, 2004—While Washington rule makers made 19 fewer regulations in 2003 than they…
Business Journal
Feds Added 4,148 Rules in ’03
News Release
Bush Administration Makes Right Decision on Phone Competition
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Washington, DC, June 9, 2004 – Today the U.S. Solicitor General's office announced it will not…
Op-Eds
If You Really Want to Reduce Gas Prices, Here’s How
Despite claims to the contrary, there is not much the federal government can do about high oil and gasoline prices in the short-term. Indeed, given…
Op-Eds
EU Is out of Step over Regulation of Modified Products
Sir, The premise of Steven Druker’s rant that the US criticises Europe’s application of the precautionary principle yet uses it itself (“America’s hypocrisy over modified…
Op-Eds
We eat only what we choose to
To answer John Gapper’s question (Who would be in Neville Isdell’s shoes?”) in his article “How to get fat on a healthy diet”…
Business Journal
Market Distortion (Letter to the Editor)
Michelle Singletary’s premise that subsidies are market-distorting is indeed correct (“The Color of Money,” MoneyWise, May 2). The Higher Education Act prescribing these guarantees is…
Op-Eds
Does the European Union Believe in Ghosts?: An Unwarranted Fear of Tax Competition
A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of tax competition. The cause for this fear is the upcoming entry of 10 new members into the…
Op-Eds
“I Love Humanity; It’s People I Can’t Stand”
This is part 2 of a two-part series. To read part 1, please click here.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />…
Staff & Scholars
Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation
Ryan Young
Senior Economist and Director of Publications
- 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