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
Regulatory Reform in the 118th Congress: Separation of Powers Restoration Act
The separation of powers is a key aspect of American government. To decentralize power and ensure checks and balances, the Founders divided the federal government…
City Journal
Roll It Back
Medicaid, the federal-state entitlement for the poor, now provides health insurance to more than one in four Americans. Enrollments surged after the Affordable Care Act…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
An Executive Order from the Biden administration made some of the biggest system-level regulatory changes in years. It raises the threshold for “economically significant”…
Search Posts
New York Times
Justice Department Sues to Block AT&T-Time Warner Merger
New York Times article discusses the Justice Department’s lawsuit to block the AT&T-Time Warner Merger Legal experts were divided on the merits…
News Release
CEI Says Pai’s Roll Back of Net Neutrality Regulations is ‘Immediate Victory’ for Transparency and ‘Promising Sign’ for Upcoming Vote
Competitive Enterprise Institute adjunct fellow Jessica Melugin offered a response to the news that the Federal Communications Commission is announcing its plan today…
Medium
A Better World Begins With Better Bureaucracy
Maleka Momand writing for Medium cites Wayne Crews’ “10,000 Commandments.” The U.S. economy loses trillions of dollars every year to regulatory compliance costs, and state…
Blog
Introduction to ‘Reorganizing the Executive Branch’
We’re all sharpening our own vision of how the executive branch can be rationalized, right-sized, streamlined, and otherwise reformed.
Blog
Confessions of a Recovering Bureaucrat
Neither clarity nor efficiency in government has improved in the past eight decades.
Blog
How to Reform the Executive Branch
President Trump’s March 13th executive order “Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Executive Branch” set in motion a process that could yield dramatic changes to how…
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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