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
News Release
CEI study: Congress should establish limits on regulatory power to ensure agencies are not answering major policy questions
Many of the biggest policy decisions affecting the lives of Americans are made by federal agencies, not Congress. According to a new report from…
Study
Congress, Not Agencies, Should Answer Major Policy Questions
Many of the biggest policy decisions affecting the lives of Americans are made by federal agencies, not Congress. During the Biden administration, this has included…
Blog
Congress should heed GAO’s new regulatory reform recommendations
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a December 2023 report titled “Options for Enhancing Congressional Oversight of Rulemaking and Establishing an Office of Legal…
Search Posts
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Congress is on its August recess, but agencies stayed busy with more than 2,000 Federal Register pages, 51 proposed regulations, and nearly 100 final regulations…
Blog
Tepid Economic Performance Argues for Cutting Government Red Tape
How is the economy doing? It’s a mixed picture.
Washington Times
Jump-starting America
The Washington Times cites the calculated cost of federal regulations from Wayne Crews's annual Ten Thousand Commandments report. Mr. Trump proposes a temporary…
Forbes
Here’s What Happened The Last Time We Tried Donald Trump’s Moratorium On Regulations
In Donald Trump’s Detroit economic speech and in his “An America First Economic Plan: Winning The Global Competition,” he said: "Upon taking…
Blog
EPA’s Missed Deadlines Causing Widespread Dysfunction
Yesterday I published a study that reviews EPA’s performance for more than 1,000 Clean Air Act deadlines. Here’s the big takeaway: the agency missed 84…
Washington Examiner
The White House is crippling our economy
Congressman Tom Price writes for Washington Examiner and highlights the cost of government red tape as calculated in Wayne Crews's annual report on the size of federal…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The 2016 Federal Register broke the 50,000-page mark on Friday, and remains on a record pace. New regulations for the week ranged from cement to…
Reason Magazine
Regulations Make Americans $4 Trillion Poorer
Reason Magazine reports on the costs of regulation as published in Wayne Crews's annual study on the size of federal regulation. The compliance…
Blog
Federal Register Tops 50,000 Pages, Yet Obama’s Report to Congress Is MIA
The annual Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Unfunded Mandates on State, Local, and Tribal Entities is quite overdue.
Blog
Can the Ideas in the RNC Platform Help Reform Regulation?
Lord knows. But the Republican Party’s new platform which contains planks on such pressing issues as “Protection Against an Electromagnetic Pulse (p. 54),” also has…
Forbes
Unfunded Mandates On The States Rising Again
Fifteen Republican Attorneys General just wrote to House and Senate leadership, concerned about agencies “failing to fully consider the effect of their regulations on…
Forbes
Rick Perry: Black Lives Matter — And So Does Black Liberty
Texas Governor Rick Perry uses Wayne Crews's estimated cost of federal regulations in a speech at American Legislative Exchange Council's annual meeting. Governor Perry's speech was…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The big story of the week was the new proposed payday lending regulation, which ate up 356 pages of Friday’s 625-page Federal Register.
CNBC
Supporting Trump over Clinton is a no-brainer
CNBC cites CEI's calculation of the cost of federal regulations as published in Wayne Crews's annual report on regulation. Politicized government agencies have engaged…
Blog
Worst Procedural Abuses of the Obama Era: Net Neutrality
Under the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), before an agency may issue a new rule, it must usually publish a notice of proposed rulemaking in…
Blog
Washington Post “Fact Checker” Column Still in Denial over Regulatory Costs
The Washington Post “Fact Checker” column is running its critiques of the Republican convention, and in the process is trying again to rebuff a $15,000…
Blog
Worst Procedural Abuses of the Obama Era: Good Cause, Bad Faith
For the past seven decades, most federal agency actions must comport with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The APA lays out the basic processes required…
Blog
Worst Procedural Abuses of the Obama Era: The Series
Inspired by our friends at RegBlog, Open Market is publishing a new blog series this week on pressing issues in administrative law and regulatory policy.
Daily Caller
GOP Platform: It’s Time To Get Rid Of The EPA
The Daily Caller cites the cost of federal regualtions as calculated in Wayne Crews's annual report on the size of the federal regulatory state. …
Charleston Gazette-Mail
Capito attacks coal regulations, Clinton’s emails at RNC
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, in her speech at the Republican National Convention, focuses on the cost of federal regulations citing a figure from Wayne Crews's annual…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
New regulations from the past week cover everything from Namibian meat to California raisins.
Blog
The Next President Should Learn from Reagan’s Legacy on Government Reform
My colleague Wayne Crews has a fascinating policy brief out this week, “Channeling Reagan by Executive Order: How the Next President Can Begin Rolling Back…
News Release
Urgent Priority for Next President: Executive Order Limiting Regulation
As the Democrat and Republican parties debate priority issues for their party policy platforms, they have a unique opportunity to strike at out-of-control regulations. A…
Study
Channeling Reagan by Executive Order
How the Next President Can Begin Rolling Back the Obama Regulation Rampage…
Blog
Primer on the Separation of Powers Restoration Act
The House today will vote on H.R. 4768, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act (SOPRA). This bill would direct courts to stop giving controlling respect…
The Hill
Big Brother? How SOPRA can help restore proper authority
The Internet as we know it may soon become unrecognizable. That’s because the freewheeling “network of networks” soon will be regulated by bureaucrats. The D.C.
Blog
House Judiciary Subcommittee Assesses OMB Review of Federal Regulations
Last week on July 6, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Sub-Committee Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law conducted a hearing on…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a short work week due to the Fourth of July holiday, but agencies still managed to issue new rules covering everything from stormwater…
Forbes
Here’s How Financial And Other Regulators Are Issuing Rules Without Writing Them
At the end of June I testified in a U.S. Senate Homeland Security Regulatory oversight subcommittee hearing on Examining the Use of Agency Regulatory…
Blog
Testimony on Regulatory Budgeting before the House Budget Committee
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee conducted a hearing on An Introduction to Regulatory Budgeting, and I was invited to testify by Chairman…
Blog
My One Agreement with Sen. Warren: Federal Rulemaking Should Be Transparent
In my two previous posts, I picked apart Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s allegation that notice and comment rulemakings are unfairly tilted in the favor of regulated…
Blog
More Wrongheadedness from Sen. Warren on Notice and Comment Rulemakings
Under the Administrative Procedure Act, federal agencies are required to undertake certain procedures when they promulgate rules of general applicability.
Blog
Sen. Warren’s Baseless Criticism of Notice and Comment Rulemaking
In a recent blog post about “regulatory capture,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren claimed that notice and comment rulemaking is unduly biased towards regulated parties.
Politico
Congress is back!
Politico's Morning Energy mentions Wayne Crews's report on a federal regulatory budget. The House has all the committee action on the energy front,…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Maybe the recently-passed Congressional Review Act deadline we wrote about earlier hasn’t had much effect on midnight regulators.
Blog
Senate Gazes at Regulatory Dark Matter
The Senate Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management held a hearing yesterday, Examining the Use of Agency Regulatory Guidance, Part II, featuring testimony from…
Blog
Toward a Regulatory Budget
How much should the U.S. government spend on defense? How much on health care? Or energy, or technology?…
Newsmax
What We Can Learn From Britain’s Exit
Newsmax discusses Wayne Crews's annual report on the size and cost of federal regulations. Some regulations make sense. Most libertarians could accept the…
Blog
Will the Sharing Economy Give Us Greater Economic Mobility?
Last night the R Street Institute sponsored a fascinating policy panel here in Washington, D.C., “Boost or Barrier? Upward mobility in the on-demand economy.”…
Blog
Examining Agency (Over)Use of Regulatory Guidance Documents
Today the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management conducted a hearing on "Examining the Use of Agency…
The New York Times
Costs of Regulations
To the Editor: You criticize our study of federal agencies, “Ten Thousand Commandments,” for analyzing the costs of regulations without adjusting for their alleged benefits…
Blog
Bill Frezza Wins Economic Writing Prize
Bill Frezza, host of RealClear Radio Hour and CEI fellow, was awarded the Foundation for Economic Education’s 2016 Beth Hoffman prize for economic writing for…
The Hill
Business report: Regulate the regulators
The Hill reports on Wayne Crews's report on calculating the true cost of government with a regulatory budget. The conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)…
Study
Toward a Federal Regulatory Budget
The Pitfalls in Quantifying Regulatory Costs and How to Avoid Them…
Blog
RealClear Radio Hour: Innovation Economy & State Fiscal Breakdown
This week on RealClear Radio Hour, guests Garrett Johnson and Eileen Norcross explain the importance of developing a more technologically nimble and fiscally responsible government.
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The 2016 Federal Register surpassed 40,000 pages last week, with new rules ranging from lights on farm equipment to grading raisins.
E&E News
Panel features critic of ‘regulatory dark matter’
E&E News reports on Wayne Crews testifying on federal agencies regulating through guidance documents before a Senate subcommittee. The conservative scholar who writes the…
News Release
Federal Regulatory Budget Is Worth the Effort
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released Toward a Federal Regulatory Budget, a paper that examines why and how Congress must take a more proactive…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The 2016 Federal Register will surpass 40,000 pages next week, and is on pace to exceed 85,000 pages for the first time in its 80-year…
Blog
Building on the Optimism of “Uber-Positive” Attitudes
There’s a new resource for understanding the state of play between politics and developments in the sharing economy, the pleasantly slim volume by the Manhattan…
Daily Caller
Upholding Net Neutrality Will Put Us Back In The Slow Lane
The Daily Caller reports on the cost of federal regulations with Wayne Crews. This is but one recent example of the unintended consequences…
Blog
Why Shouldn’t the Energy Department Run the Entire Economy?
New Energy Department standards for dehumidifiers promise massive benefits. Depending on which set of numbers you prefer (the link goes to the Energy Department’s own…
Blog
New Options for Regulatory Reform from Speaker Ryan
We here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute appreciate the release of the new report by the Task Force on Reducing Regulatory Burdens, issued as part…
Blog
Speaker Ryan’s Deregulatory Report: Clamp Down on Federal Labor Agencies’ Overreach
Today, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) released his plan for how to modernize our federal regulatory system in order to jumpstart the economy. This is…
Fox News
America desperately needs relief from regulations. Ryan’s plan is a good place to start
Fox News references Wayne Crews's annual report on the size and cost of federal regulations. Regulations are the silent killer. In its most…
Blog
Export-Import Bank Drama Continues
The Senate’s main business right now is the annual Defense Appropriations bill. The Export-Import Bank, or Ex-Im for short, might become part of that bill.
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The number of new regulations for the year exceeded the 1,500 mark last week, with new rules covering everything from seatbelts to suckerfish. On to the…
Blog
RealClear Radio Hour: Common Sense Economics
At CEI’s 2016 annual dinner—A Night in Casablanca!—in DC, I caught up with three interesting gentlemen for a dose of common sense economics.
Washington Examiner
Fighting Back Against Obama’s Regulatory Regime
The Washington Examiner mentions CEI's calculation of the cost of federal regulations. It's hard to find anything much more detrimental to economic growth…
Law 360
GOP’s Swing At Dodd-Frank Could Give Banks Edge In Court
Law 360 discusses eliminating the Cheveron deference with William Yeatman. Backers of such moves say there are both principled as well as political…
Blog
Controlling Federal Agency Guidance Documents: A To-Do List for Congress and Reformers
When I wrote about the proliferation of federal agency guidance documents and other regulatory “dark matter” that skirts Congressional oversight and even normal…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Last week’s Federal Register fell short of 2,000 pages, mainly because it was a four-day work week due the Memorial Day holiday. While the Federal…
Cato Unbound
The Administrative State Lacks Its Own Justification: Expertise
Legitimacy notwithstanding, we tend to discuss the administrative state as if it is a functioning expert entity, taking expertise in its divisions for granted. But…
Daily Caller
Feds Publish Over 2,000 Pages Of New Regs In ONE WEEK
The Daily Caller discusses new rules published in the Federal Register with Ryan Young. The Obama administration has been busy implementing what remains…
Blog
Inequality: Policies That Work, and Policies That Don’t
CEI recently released a pair of papers by Iain Murray and me about economic inequality. The first encourages activists to ask the right questions: think…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Congressional Review Act deadline for the possible midnight regulation rush has now likely passed, though the Federal Register once again topped 2,000 pages last week. That…
Blog
Federal Regulations Affecting Small Business
It is often said that there is no such thing as a free lunch, something particularly true for the small businessperson. The “Small Business…
Cato Unbound
On the Administrative State’s Illegitimacy
"Who is better than overreaching bureaucrats to decide when the bureaucrats are overreaching?” That was one respondent’s characterization of the mindset that provoked the recently…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
As mentioned earlier, something of a regulatory midnight rush is happening right now. The Federal Register topped 2,000 pages for the third time in four weeks—a rare…
Washington Times
Killing the regulatory parasite
The Washington Times highlights Wayne Crews's annual report on the size and costs of federal regulations. From the new annual report, Ten Thousand…
Wall Street Journal
Trump for Blow-Upper in Chief?
The Wall Street Journal highlights Wayne Crews's annual report on the cost and size of federal regulations. The Competitive Enterprise Institute finds that,…
Forbes
Obama Releases Spring 2016 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations
In the just-released spring 2016 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations (Agenda), a roundup published twice yearly by the White House Office of Management and…
Daily Caller
Obama Has 3,260 Rules In The Regulatory Pipeline
The Daily Caller discusses the White House's budget office annual agenda for regulations with Wayne Crews. “These rules are projected to have economic…
Blog
Regulation: A 28 Percent Hidden Tax For The Family
When corporations pay taxes, you pay taxes. That is, while it’s popular to tax rich corporations, and even if they write the check to the…
Blog
Deadline for Major New Regulations This Week?
An early midnight rush of controversial new regulations might be on the way over the next week or so. Why now instead of the very…
The Fiscal Times
The Crushing Cost of Regulation: $4 Trillion Since 1980
The Fiscal Times mentions Wayne Crews's annual study on the cost of federal regulation. That's a big deal. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, in…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Federal Register broke the 30,000-page barrier last week, with new regulations covering everything from baked beans to e-cigarettes. On to the data: Last week, 58 new…
Patriot Post
Killing Us Softly With Overregulation
The Patriot Post discusses Wayne Crews's annual report on the size and cost of federal regulation. Each year the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a…
Reuters
U.S. Global Investors Reports Financial Results for the Third Quarter of 2016 Fiscal Year
Reuters discusses the cost of federal regulation as analyzed in Wayne Crews's annual Ten Thousand Commandments report. The company's revenues have been hit…
Blog
Regulatory Cost Blowout: Burden Is Triple the Deficit, Greater than Personal and Corporate Income Taxes Combined
The last time the federal government balanced the budget was between 1998 and 2001. But those were days when a $2 trillion federal budget…
Blog
Ten Thousand Commandments
The brand new 2016 edition of Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr.’s Ten Thousand Commandments report is out now. You can read it here. If you…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
After a slow start, 2016 is back to a normal regulatory pace. The Federal Register is on a nearly 80,000-page pace, and the number of new rules…
Wall Street Journal
So Many Rules, So Few Opportunities
The Wall Street Journal features Wayne Crews's annual report on the size and cost of federal regulations. Friday’s jobs report from the Labor…
The Hill
Presidential candidates should talk about regulation
From “lyin’” to “low-energy,” the current election’s lowering of the rhetorical bar to levels that challenge even the most nimble limbo dancer is more than…
The Fiscal Times
Trump’s Hard Truth for the GOP: Conservatism Doesn’t Matter
The Fiscal Times mentions Wayne Crews's annual report on the size and costs of federal regulations. An explosion of regulatory activity at the…
Western Journalism
The Crushing Cost Of Complying With Government
Mike Huckabee mentions Wayne Crews's annual report on the size and cost of federal regulations for Western Journalism. One of the arguments I’ve…
Blog
The Barack Obama Regulatory State Towers over that of Bush
A glance at the overall count of rules and regulations leads one to suppose regulatory burdens are decreasing. After all, since Obama took office the…
Products
Ten Thousand Commandments 2018 – Executive Summary
Download the Executive Summary as a PDF Spending and deficit restraint are vital to the nation’s economic health. But the cost…
Study
Ten Thousand Commandments 2016
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, businesses,…
Products
9,999 Commandments? Six Ways Rule Flows Were Reduced or Streamlined in 2017
Download Chapter 1 as a PDF Rather than jump directly into the numbers of rules and regulations, this year’s Ten Thousand…
Products
Toward a Federal Regulatory Budget
Download Chapter 2 as a PDF When Congress spends money, a certain degree of disclosure helps voters hold their representatives accountable. Federal…
Products
The Cost of Regulation and Intervention
Download Chapter 3 as a PDF Regulation and spending are related; both are implements by which governments act or compel individuals. Therefore, policy…
Products
Thousands of Pages and Rules in the Federal Register
Download Chapter 4 as a PDF The Federal Register is the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations. Although…
Products
Presidential Executive Orders and Executive Memoranda
Download Chapter 5 as a PDF Executive orders, presidential memoranda, and other executive actions make up a large component of executive “lawmaking” but…
Products
More than 22,000 Public Notices Annually
Download Chapter 6 as a PDF In addition to the Federal Register’s tally of some presidential memoranda, public notices in the Federal…
Products
Analysis of the Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulation
Download Chapter 7 as a PDF The “Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions” (the Agenda) is where agencies…
Products
Government Accountability Office Database on Regulations
Download Chapter 8 as a PDF The various federal reports and databases on regulations serve different purposes: The Federal Register shows the…
Investor's Business Daily
Federal Regulations Now Cost Almost $1.9 Trillion, Study Finds
Investor's Business Daily reports on Clyde Wayne Crews's annual analysis on the costs of regulations. CEI’s latest “10,000 Commandments” adds up the total…
Washington Examiner
Cost of regulations under Obama reach $1.9 trillion, $14,842 ‘hidden tax’ on every family
The Washington Examiner reports on Clyde Wayne Crews's annual analysis on the costs of regulation. The annual "Ten Thousand Commandments" report from the…
Fox News
Report: Federal regulations costing US $1.9T annually
Fox News reports on Clyde Wayne Crews's annual report on the costs of federal regulations. The annual Ten Thousand Commandments report was released…
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