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.
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Politicians should push deregulatory initiatives – not investor limits – to boost housing affordability
Both President Trump and Democrats in Congress seem to blame the high costs of housing on certain groups of real estate investors and to restrict…
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Environmental problems deserve free market solutions: Our Words
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute is pleased to publish CEI President Kent Lassman’s lecture entitled The Environment, the Law, Markets, and the Path…
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The Environment, the Law, Markets, and the Path Forward
Introduction The Pharos Foundation at Jesus College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, invited me to speak at an on-campus forum in May.
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First Ever Constitutional Ruling against Dodd-Frank Voids Destructive “Conflict Minerals” Section
Today’s ruling of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that Dodd-Frank’s "conflict minerals" disclosure mandate violates the First Amendment is the first time ever a court has…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
59 new regulations, from rearview cameras to pocket gophers.
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EEOC Loses Hypocritical Lawsuit against Employer over Background Checks
"In this case the EEOC sued the defendants for using the same type of background check that the EEOC itself uses." So began a…
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Pompeo-Butterfield Food Labeling Bill: Valuable But Needs Work
Earlier today, Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) introduced a bill in the House that would establish federal standards for the labeling of…
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Administration’s Lack of Transparency Extends to States; The Independence Institute Reports New Findings
Although President Obama occasionally clings to the claim that his administration is the “most transparent” in history, with more and more revelations, this gets farther…
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Threatening Free Speech, New Jersey Court Allows Parents to Be Sued for Children’s Facebook Posts
Earlier, we wrote about a Wisconsin town whose ordinance holds parents liable for bullying by their children, including certain speech. We and law professor…
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Clyde Wayne Crews
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