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
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…
Blog
The week in regulations: Nuclear fees and unintentional otter injuries
The possible war with Iran did not escalate. The reconciliation bill debate continued, as did presidential pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower rates. U.S.
Blog
The week in regulations: FAA ethics and Postal Service justice
Social Security will go bust in 2033. War with Iran is a real possibility. The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, as expected. It is…
Search Posts
Op-Eds
Debit Durbin
Read the headlines — and your bank statement — and weep, but don’t say TAS didn’t warn you. As I detailed here in February…
Blog
Right on Cue
In this morning's CEI Podcast, my colleague John Berlau predicted that the new price cap on debit card swipe fees would lead to the end…
Blog
CEI Podcast for September 29, 2011: The End of Free Debit Cards
Every time you use your debit card, the merchant has to pay a fee to the company that issued your card, usually about 1 percent…
DC Velocity
Freedom to Move: Interview with Marc Scribner
Blog
Automatic Economic Stabilizers or Stable Economic Rules?
Former Obama OMB Director Peter Orszag (who joined Citigroup earlier this year as vice chairman for global banking) over at The New Republic thinks we’ve…
Blog
Blame Not Banks — But Big Box and Big Government — For Free Checking’s Demise
Read it and weep, but don't say OpenMarket didn't warn you. Thanks to Dodd-Frank's Durbin Amendment, price controls on interchange fees --…
Blog
FDA Approves Device To Help Doctors Detect Skin Cancer
There's an unusual bit of good news out of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In March 2010 and again last November, the…
DC Velocity
Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL) Regulation Tends to Serve Interests of Lawyers, Not Consumers
DC Velocity
Lawyers Use Ban on Unauthorized Practice of Law to Restrict Speech & Competition
For Construction Pros
NRMCA: President’s Jobs Plan At Odds With Administration Regulatory Action
For Construction Pros discusses Wayne Crews's report on the size of the federal regulatory burden. Highlighting the magnitude of numerous new regulations, this…
Blog
Pull Out of Basel III: The Moral Hazard of Government Ratings
Recently and for different reasons, two high-profile players from different parts of the financial sector -- JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon and respected banking analyst…
Blog
Obamacare Will Increase Health Insurance Premiums by 55 to 85 Percent in Ohio, Study Says
The Charleston Daily Mail’s Don Surber points to a recent study “that shows that 790,000 Ohioans will lose their private health insurance and premiums…
Blog
Regulation Roundup
In Seattle, Washington, the maximum length allowed for concealed weapons is 6 feet, plus more.
Blog
Flushing Oral Oncology Drugs Down the Toilet?
An interesting article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (via yesterday's Jerusalem Post) argues that the U.S. Food and…
Blog
Dodd-Frank Financial Law Uses Regulations to Outsource American Jobs
American jobs will soon be outsourced due to the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" law passed in 2010 with strong support from the Obama administration. That law…
Blog
Government Fines Businessman for Creating Jobs
A CEO recently told Congress about how he was fined for hiring too many people: “I incurred more than $500,000 in legal bills to…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 197: Planking
Threats to freedoms even as trivial as planking should not be taken lying down.
Townhall
Michigan on Brink of Massive Education Reform
On Friday September 9, Michigan State Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville (R-Monroe) announced he would introduce legislation giving teachers in his state right to work…
Blog
The Mythical Benefits of Plastic Bag Bans Debunked
Some municipalities have now imposed taxes or restrictions on plastic shopping bags, even though banning or taxing plastic bags has little effect on litter, and…
Blog
Phony Breast Cancer Group’s Phony Findings on BPA
Activists at the Breast Cancer Fund are scheduled to release a new scaremongering “study” on the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) tomorrow,…
Blog
How to Make Legal Advice and Legal Services More Affordable Without Taxpayer Subsidies
At Truth on the Market, I discuss how to make legal advice and legal services more affordable at this link. I also discuss…
Blog
Federal Register Near Record Pace
This year's Federal Register is on pace to be 80,190 pages long. That's an average of 220 pages of fresh proposed rules, final rules, notices,…
Townhall
Google And The Antitrust Case Against Antitrust
Now that the economy has recovered to robust health and unemployment is back below 5%, the U.S. Senate has ample time and resources to spend…
Ceske Noviny
Czech President Warns in USA Against Effort to Restrict Freedom
Blog
Obama’s Proposed New Tax Will Multiply Red Tape and Enrich Tax Lawyers and Accountants More than the Treasury
I have argued that "significant tax increases" may be necessary as part of a deficit reduction deal, given the enormity of the deficit and…
Blog
Warren Buffett, Give Your Secretary a Raise!
So it has been decreed -- by Warren Buffett, by President Barack Obama, and by media members going gaga over to so-called Buffett Rule --…
Blog
Regulation Roundup
Flirting is illegal in Haddon, New Jersey, plus more.
Blog
House Hearing on Effects of EU Privacy Directive
Yesterday the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade held a hearing addressing the economic consequences of the European Union’s internet privacy regulations. The…
Ceske Noviny
Liberate the Jobs!
The most fascinating aspect of House Speaker John Boehner’s very effective address to the Economic Club was not the specific solutions he presented but the…
Fox News
Regulation Nation: As Firms Grow, Regs Follow
Fox News highlights Wayne Crews's annual report on the size of the federal regulatory burden. In his yearly report, Ten Thousand Commandments: An…
Blog
Obama and Sarbanes-Oxley Review — The One Sentence Worth 4,000 Words for Jobs
In President Obama’s 33-minute-long speech to Congress on job creation last week, one sentence was worth nearly all the rest of his 4,000 words.
Blog
Infrastructure Si, Infrastructure Bank No
In his Forbes column, James Glassman provides a counterpoint to the Obama proposal to create a national infrastructure bank. Rather than direct funds through…
Blog
Congressional Vote to Halt NLRB Job-Killing Regulations
President Obama and the Senate Democrats' agenda will be put to the test. GOP senators have called for the vote on the Protecting Jobs…
Fox News
Law Schools Roundup
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
GOP Attack on Regulations Starting This Week
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch discusses Wayne Crews's report on the size of the federal regulatory burden. Complaints about government overreach are not new,…
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Will Obama and Congress Slay the Sarbox Job-Killing Monster?
In President Obama’s 33-minute-long speech to Congress on job creation, one sentence was worth nearly all the rest of his 4,000 words. In the…
House Oversight Committee
Broken Government: How the Administrative State has Broken President Obama’s Promise of Regulatory Reform
Blog
H.R. 1909 Brings Competitive Regulation to Small Loan Market
The Summer of 2011 will likely be remembered as a season that overregulation came to a boiling point -- at all levels of the U.S. government.
Blog
Belt Tightening At FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation
Last week the House Appropriations Committee released its draft bill for funding of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. Of particular note is the appropriation…
Blog
State Losing Control of Pennsylvania Liquor
Privatizing Pennsylvania's liquor stores has been a subject of debate for decades. Proposals in the past have been met with fear about the effects privatization…
Blog
Regulatory Roundup
Here’s another batch of regulatory bloopers: In Little Rock, Arkansas, it is illegal to honk your horn at a restaurant after 9:00 pm. It has…
House Oversight Committee
Nice Talk. When’s the Jobs Speech?
Hauling the United States Senate and a reluctant House together to listen to you on NFL kickoff night–when it’s not even State of the…
House Oversight Committee
Immigration is Not Charity
The biggest misconception about immigration is that it is a zero-sum game–that there is a finite number of jobs which immigrants “take” from the…
House Oversight Committee
A Plan Better than Obama’s to Create Jobs
News Release
CEI Presents Alternative to American Jobs Act
Washington, D.C., September 9, 2011—Last night, President Obama presented Congress with a $447 billion “American Jobs Act.” The high price tag covers yet another…
Blog
Obama’s Costly, Unaffordable, Harmful New Stimulus: The “American Jobs Act”
President Obama wants Congress to pass a $447 billion proposal called the "American Jobs Act," a costly set of recycled stimulus plans that contains no new ideas…
Blog
My Fantasy Obama Jobs Speech
The following is my fantasy speech on jobs from Barack Obama. He looks at CEI's websites, realizes his big-government approach has been all wrong, but…
Blog
The “Overhead Smash” Of ITAR
Over at Beltway Confidential today, Tim Carney asks if one of the unintended (or perhaps not-so-unintended) consequences of Dodd-Frank will be to…
House Oversight Committee
Jobs Speech Won’t Do the Job
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney released his own jobs agenda this week in anticipation of President Obama’s Thursday address to Congress. The most important idea is…
News Release
CEI’s Ten-Point Plan to Create Jobs
1. Repeal financial “reform” laws, such as Dodd-Frank and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, that are causing economic uncertainty and dissuading businesses from expanding, investing, and hiring…
Blog
TSA Agent: Be Quiet About Alleged Sexual Assault, or Pay $500,000
Give some people a badge, and the power goes to their head. A TSA agent has threatened to sue a female traveler who complained…
Blog
Obama Infrastructure Stimulus: Union Payoff Filled with Rail Boondoggles and Pork
Obama's proposed infrastructure stimulus is a payoff to Big Labor, as economist Ronald Utt explains. It "represents tens of billions of dollars in high,…
Blog
Stimulating Language
I’ve argued for a long time that stimulus bills are poorly named; it implies that they stimulate the economy. “Spending bill” is a non-loaded term…
Blog
Dear Labor, Don’t Fear the Robot
In California, a war is quietly being fought: workers versus technology. And the war has materialized in the form of a bill that seeks…
Blog
Obama’s Ironic, Belated, and Unaffordable Infrastructure “Stimulus”
In a Labor Day speech to an AFL-CIO rally in Detroit, President Obama said that "roads and bridges nationwide need rebuilding and more than…
Canada Free Press
Obama’s Jobs Speech is D.O.A.
Canada Free Press discusses Wayne Crews's study on the size of the federal regulatory burden. Obamacare has stalled hiring as businesses large and…
Atlantic Highlands Herald
The Jobs-Thing
The Atlantic Highlands Herald discusses Wayne Crews's report on the size of the federal regulatory burden. This topic crosses the eyes of the man on…
Blog
Regulation Roundup
Burping in church is illegal in Nevada unless it's accidental, plus more.
Blog
Alcohol Regulation Roundup: September 2, 2011
I'm back from the West Coast with another (hoppier) edition of the Alcohol Regulation Roundup, a collection of stories about our nations constantly changing, sometimes…
Blog
A “Condom Mandate” is No Benefit for Adult Film Actors
I heard the news while driving home from work: a California porn star tested positive for HIV, resulting in a voluntary…
Atlantic Highlands Herald
Obama’s Anti-Jobs Agenda
Though President Obama is nowhere to be seen on ground-level job-creation efforts apart from the golf course, he did issue an early 2011 executive order…
News Release
Zero August Job Growth Reflects Anti-Business, Red Tape Climate in Washington
Washington, D.C., September 2, 2011 — Today’s job numbers from the US Department of Labor are downright dismal: the economy failed to add new…
Blog
CEI Podcast for September 1, 2011: The Blocked AT&T-T-Mobile Merger
The Department of Justice sued this week to stop the proposed AT&T-T-Mobile merger. Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia thinks this is a mistake.
Blog
The DOJ’s Antitrust Seers
The philosopher Yogi Berra once said that “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Let’s apply his lesson to the proposed $39 billion…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 196: Babysitting
This bill will result in a lot of unhappy nights at home for frustrated parents – and a lot less income for sitters who have…
Blog
NLRB’s Pro-Big Labor Ruling Trifecta is Bad News for the Economy
Earlier this year, President Obama proudly touted his executive order calling for federal agencies to review regulations on their books and identify obsolete rules for…
Blog
Despite D.C. Legalization of Online Poker, Players Leave USA
It is perhaps a little ironic that the most vocal opponents of online poker will soon be the only people in the USA who can…
Blog
Many New Job-Killing Regulations from the Obama Administration
Andrew Stiles describes "Ten Job-Destroying Regulations" from the Obama administration that will wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs. Another job-killing regulation is the…
Blog
Welch vs. Lee: What About Freight?
Libertarian urbanist -- call him a "market urbanist" -- Timothy B. Lee recently had an article at Forbes.com in which he criticized Matt Welch…
Blog
Infrastructure Pork versus Infrastructure Investment: In Washington, There is No Difference
The labor theory of value still survives -- at least in politics. Both Democrats and Republicans still believe that "government must create jobs," and if…
Washington Times
Obama’s Proposed Regs Would Cost Billions Annually
Washington Times highlights Wayne Crews's study on the federal regulatory burden. And a study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think…
Blog
More Barriers to Job Creation from Obama Administration: Employers Must Hire Alcoholics as Truck Drivers Despite Liability Risk
The president is full of hollow rhetoric about creating jobs, even though his stimulus package destroyed jobs in our export sector and…
Blog
AT&T-T-Mobile Merger Delayed
A few months ago, the FCC said it would hand down a decision on whether to allow AT&T and T-Mobile to merge within 180 days.
Washington Times
Do We Really Need a National Weather Service?
As Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast, news stations bombard our televisions with constant updates from the National Hurricane Center. While Americans ought…
Blog
Regulation Roundup
Some of the stranger rules I've dug recently:…
Blog
The Texas Empire Strikes Back
Well, I made a prediction here yesterday: It will be interesting to see how those in Congress who have been demanding…
Blog
Who’s Afraid of Snuggles the Bear?
As the East Coast braces to be pummeled by Hurricane Irene, a new study in the Journal Air Quality and Atmosphere…
Blog
NLRB to Businesses: Tell Employees they Can Unionize
The National Labor Relations Board has issued a new rule “requiring most private-sector employers to notify employees of their rights under the National Labor…
Washington Times
Bureaucrats Have Gone Rogue
G.O.P. presidential candidates should emphasize that reining in the E.P.A. is a constitutional imperative. Yes, Americans are worried about jobs and the economy, but arguing…
Washington Times
Rekindling the Dream
Martin Luther King Jr. is now memorialized with an imposing statue on the D.C. National Mall. While the honor is long overdue, his legacy should…
Blog
Eminent Domain, Rick Perry, and the Trans-Texas Corridor
Attorney Alan Ackerman has a post up highlighting and commenting on an article that argues that critics of Texas Governor Rick Perry from the right…
News Release
Obama’s Deregulation Initiative Falls Short of Substantive Reform
Washington, D.C., August 24, 2011—President Obama announced that independent agencies will wipe as many as 500 rules from the books in the coming months.
Blog
FCC Repeals 83 Regulations
The repeals will become official upon publication in the Federal Register.
Blog
More Bailouts, Urge Left-Leaning Journalists
Left-leaning journalists are urging more mortgage bailouts to try to increase consumer spending, since they erroneously think that inadequate consumer spending is the principal cause…
Yahoo News
The Alarming Cost Of Climate Change Hysteria
Yahoo News discusses an estimate of the costs of federal regulations from Wayne Crews's study. The Small Business Administration estimates that compliance with…
Blog
Deregulate the Practice of Law to Promote Justice and Create Jobs
It's time to deregulate the practice of law, write Clifford Winston and Robert W. Crandall of the Brookings Institution in The Wall Street…
Blog
A Letter to the Editor about Natural Rights and the Cuban Economy
In an editorial last week Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote about a supposed “economic revolution” happening in Cuba. It seems the Cuban government has just liberated…
Business Insider
$38 Billion-Worth Of Red Tape Choking Businesses
Business Insider mentions Wayne Crews's study on the size of the federal regulatory burden. U.S. businesses continue to deal with the unintended consequences…
Blog
Lemonade Freedom Day Is Tomorrow
Tomorrow, parents and children across the country will set up lemonade stands in their neighborhoods. And they’re going to do it without getting licensed, inspected,…
Blog
Regulation Roundup
In Delaware, it is a felony to wear a disguise while committing a felony, plus more.
Business Insider
Forget Corporate Jets. Government Limousines Show They’re Stealing You Blind
President Obama has made a big deal out of corporate jets. Apparently they are a symbol not of success but of greed. Yet even…
Wall Street Pit
Is Business Choking on Red Tape?
The Wall Street Pit discusses Wayne Crews's report on the size of the federal regualtory burden. U.S. businesses continue to deal with the…
Blog
“Rules are Rules,” When it Comes to Yard Sales
The City of Salem, Oregon, is cracking down on yard sales — even if they are a citizen’s last option to pay for expensive…
The Future of Freedom Foundation
O’er the Land of the 39 Percent Free
Blog
Regulation of the Day 195: Fitted Sheets
California’s state legislature is poised to pass SB 432. It would, of all things, make it a crime for hotels to use non-fitted sheets.
The Future of Freedom Foundation
Let’s Put a Stop to the War on Salt
First Lady Michelle Obama has been lobbying strongly this year for food manufacturers to reduce the sodium content of their products. Her efforts scored a…
OA Online
Mileage Standards Will Decrease Safety
Blog
Obama Ignores even Internal Dissent on Environmentalist Agenda
President Obama will stop at nothing to pursue his war on coal. He won’t even listen to those within his own administration. His…
Blog
EPA-Backed Study: Products Containing BPA Harmless
The US Environmental Protection Agency officially backed a study last week underscores what scientists around the world have been saying for years: BPA is not…
Blog
Alcohol Regulatory Round-up: August 11th 2011
Federal: A proposed bill, Brewer's Employment and Excise Relief Act, would reduce the federal excise taxes for craft brewers in order to help them…
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