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
Biden’s regulatory landscape: A year-end analysis
As we ring in 2025, the Federal Register reveals a noteworthy chapter in regulatory history under the Joe Biden administration. We take our traditional year-end look at it here. The 2024 Federal Register closed…
Blog
2024 Regulation roundup
All the major regulatory numbers for 2024’s new regulations are now in the books. Here are the highlights, followed by a little analysis and a preview of…
Blog
Charting a glide path to overturn Biden regulations in the 119th Congress
As the 119th Congress and incoming Trump administration prepare to govern, one key weapon in their arsenal will be the Congressional Review Act (CRA) of…
Search Posts
Products
Regulatory Dark Matter: Presidential Executive Orders and Memoranda
Download Chapter 6 as a PDF Executive orders, presidential memoranda, and other executive actions make up a large component of executive “lawmaking.” They merit…
Products
Tens of Thousands of Pages and Rules in the Federal Register
Download Chapter 5 as a PDF The Federal Register is the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations.427 Although its…
Products
What Comes after “Trillion”? The Unknowable Costs of Regulation and Intervention
Download Chapter 4 as a PDF If real debt levels on the fiscal budget and entitlements can be vastly higher than the public is…
Products
Toward a Federal “Regulatory Budge”
Download Chapter 3 as a PDF When Congress spends, no one questions that disclosure is necessary for voters to hold representatives accountable. Federal expenditure…
Products
Swamp Things – Trump’s Discordant Regulatory Impulses Threaten to Derail His Successes and Expand the Administrative State
Download Chapter 2 as a PDF President Trump has pruned rules and costs and held down regulatory output with more enthusiasm than other presidents.146 Trump…
Products
9,999 Commandments? Six Ways Rule Flows Have Been Reduced or Streamlined
Download Chapter 1 as a PDF This edition of Ten Thousand Commandments begins with a survey of approaches the Trump administration took in its…
Study
Ten Thousand Commandments 2020 – Executive Summary
Download the Executive Summary as a PDF Spending control and deficit restraint are indispensable to a nation’s stability and long-term economic health. Yet alarm…
Study
Ten Thousand Commandments 2020
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,…
Blog
Trump’s Executive Order on #NeverNeeded Regulations
In an op-ed in National Review, CEI Senior Fellow Ryan Young takes a look at President Trump’s new Executive Order directing agencies to get rid…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Trump issued an Executive Order encouraging agencies to keep #NeverNeeded regulations waived during the coronavirus permanently off the books. Meanwhile, regulatory agencies issued new…
Blog
Trump Signs Executive Order to Spur Economic Recovery through Deregulation
President Donald Trump on May 19 signed an executive order titled, Regulatory Relief To Support Economic Recovery. The order gives cabinet secretaries and agency heads emergency powers to suspend or even eliminate regulations…
News Release
#NeverNeeded Regulation Report: Lift Regulations that Make Energy More Expensive
Lower-income households spend more of their budget on energy costs than more affluent ones, which is why regulations that increase the cost of energy have…
News Release
New Executive Order to Stimulate Recovery by Deregulating Builds on CEI’s #NeverNeeded Campaign
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) commended President Trump’s decision today to sign a new Executive Order directing cabinet members and agency heads to immediately identify…
Study
Lift #NeverNeeded Regulations that Make Energy More Expensive
Low-income households, which are more likely to suffer from unemployment and other stresses during the COVID-19 crisis, spend much more of their household budget on…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Retail sales declined 16.4 percent in April, setting a new record low for the second month in a row. Congress returned to Washington, putting the…
Citation
#NeverNeeded Regulation Report: White House Can Speed Up COVID-19 Recovery by Cutting Regulations without Congress
In a new paper released today, CEI Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews outlines several deregulatory measures the White House could take without Congress that…
Study
Pen, Phone, and Eraser?
There have now been several layers of congressional rescue-and-stimulus response to the coronavirus crisis, and there will be more “phases” to come. Given partisan discord,…
News Release
Congress Should Work With Trump Administration to Reduce Regulatory Barriers to COVID-19 Recovery
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced a proposed fourth COVID-19 recovery package that would spend roughly $3 trillion but contains no significant regulatory relief.
Study
Narrow the Focus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may well have taken their eye off the ball by…
The Wall Street Journal
Amazon’s Pandemic Success Story
There’s one bright spot in the dismal pandemic economy. Amazon is trying something that no company has attempted before: supplying the essential needs of 325 million Americans…
Youtube
VIDEO: Iain Murray Discusses #NeverNeeded Regulations and COVID-19
Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow Iain Murray joins Dana Loesch to discuss #neverneeded regulations and COVID-19…
The Epoch Times
Federal, State, and Local Governments Shed Over 170 Regulations to Fight Pandemic
The Epoch Times cites CEI on #neverneeded regulations: Even more regulations can be scrapped to empower American industry to help with the crisis,…
Bloomberg Law
Covid-19 Revives Debate over Economic Benefits of Deregulation
Bloomber Law cites Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow Iain Murray on #neverneeded regulations: Direct government aid won’t be enough to get…
CATO
Regulation after COVID-19
The CATO Institute cites CEI on #neverneeded regulations: Many of these regulations have no sound public justification whether in or outside of an…
The Federalist
South Africa’s Coronavirus Repression Signals Worse To Come
The Federalist cites CEI on #neverneeded regulations: Think tanks and researchers are working hard to shine a light on just how destructive artificial…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The first full week of May featured a continuing pandemic, the biggest unemployment increase in U.S. history, a hailstorm in the D.C. area, freezing temperatures…
The Federalist
A Proposed 13-Point Trump Agenda For Economic Stimulus By Reforming Regulation
I remembered wondering in 2017 whether the federal government would be larger or smaller after four years of Trump. We had our answer even before the…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2020 Federal Register passed 25,000 pages, and is poised to surpass last year’s page count by more than 1,000 pages. The number of final…
Blog
CEI Files New Challenge to the Administration’s Fuel Economy Standards
CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman discusses the issue with Walter Kreucher, one of the petitioners in the case, Walter Kreucher, a retired automotive engineer who…
Blog
The Economy after COVID-19 Will Be Different from Before, Part One
As governors begin to lift restrictions on economic activity, polling data show that Americans are generally still afraid of the virus and have changed their…
Blog
Like the Sun Not Rising in the East?
The Federal Register, the official daily government publication of regulations, proposed rules, and similar items did not go online today. We were awaiting today’s Federal…
Blog
The Coronavirus Outbreak Highlights Importance of the Artificial Intelligence Debate
Tracing of individuals and other measures involving artificial intelligence are in the news with respect to managing individuals’ reentry into the economy in the wake…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
New unemployment applications were down to 4.4 million last week. This is still more than an order of magnitude greater than the pre-coronavirus record. With…
Blog
DEREGULATION IN AN EMERGENCY: The President’s Emergency Powers Include Not Just Imposing Regulations on Industry, but also Suspending Regulations
Across the country, governors have suspended harmful regulations on an emergency basis due to the COVID-19 crisis. The improvements that have resulted have got people…
Blog
Congress Has Already Introduced Bills to Reform #NeverNeeded Regulations
Policy makers have already waived more than 350 regulations and counting that were slowing the pandemic response and harming economic recovery. But with a 185,000-page…
Reason
Federal Regulations Are Making the Grocery Store Supply Crunch Worse
Reason cites Senior Fellow Gregory Conko on FDA food regulations: “It’s not terribly unreasonable to have these sort of minimal safety rules remain…
Washington Examiner
COVID-19 is Changing Politics in Ways Good and Bad
The Washington Examiner cites CEI’s #NeverNeeded campaign: At the same time, a great many petty regulations are being scrapped. Rules on plastic bags,…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Please do all you can to keep yourself and your loved ones safe. Hopefully Congress will also act on some of the #NeverNeeded regulations that…
Blog
California’s #NeverNeeded AB5 Is Harming the Coronavirus Response
California’s AB5 law was already backfiring before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It has cost thousands of jobs—many of which are home-based. During a time of…
Blog
VIDEO: Road Map to Reopening
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosted a fascinating video conference this week entitled “Big Picture: Road Map to Reopening,” with the Chamber’s Suzanne Clark and…
Washington Examiner
How The White House “Guidance For Regulation Of Artificial Intelligence” Invites Overregulation
Excessive top-down federal funding and governance of scientific and technology research will be increasingly incompatible with a future of lightly regulated science and…
Blog
How to Spot a #NeverNeeded Regulation
Not every regulation on the books is directly harming the COVID-19 response. There are a lot of other regulations that need reform, but the #NeverNeeded…
Inside Sources
Post-Virus Economics – Working Toward a Small Business Recovery
When the stay-at-home orders are lifted, we’ll be in a race to get millions of Americans back to work. Large companies will be in a…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
When Congress convenes next week, it will likely begin work on a Phase 4 stimulus bill. CEI analysts have made the case that addressing #NeverNeeded…
Real Clear Markets
An Effective Pandemic Response Would Be Deregulation
During a pandemic, regulations should not get between sick people and health care, or between hungry people and food. This also applies in normal times.
Blog
How SEC Accounting Regulations Hindered National Stockpile—and Still May Be Doing So
In a new report, CEI experts outline #NeverNeeded regulations that are frustrating responses to the pandemic and its aftermath. Among those is an obscure Securities…
Blog
Deregulation Is an Effective Pandemic Defense
In a new op-ed in RealClearMarkets, Iain Murray and Ryan Young outline the major points of CEI’s just-released #NeverNeeded paper, which identifies regulations harmful to…
Real Clear Markets
How To Make The Phase 4 Coronavirus Response All About Regulatory Reform (Not Just Spending)
When it comes to spending money we don’ t have and calling it rescue, the nation has been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. We…
The Washington Examiner
List: 30 Regulations that Stymied Trump’s Virus Response
The Washington Examiner cites CEI’s latest report on #NeverNeeded regulations: “Many regulations have proven to hinder or delay appropriate policy responses. Other regulations…
News Release
Report: Repeal #NeverNeeded Regulations to Help COVID-19 Response
COVID-19 relief bills have so far focused on keeping businesses and households afloat during the pandemic closures and quarantines, but the federal government should continue…
PJ Media
After $2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus, America Must Get Its Fiscal House Back in Order
PJ Media cites CEI on #neverneeded regulations: The federal bureaucracy also needs to be simplified. Businesses may be willing to pay more in…
Study
How Repeal of #NeverNeeded Regulations Can Help Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis
A number of factors are combining to stress the American economy in the spring of 2020—the global and domestic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, an…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Quarantine and stay-at-home orders will likely last through the end of April in many places. In more heartening news, governments are rolling back numerous #NeverNeeded…
Inside Sources
Bogus Lawsuits Continue to Haunt American Businesses
Inside Sources cites CEI’s joint coalition letter on the midnight litigation campaign: As the Obama administration began its midnight litigation campaign, a coalition…
Washington Examiner
Prepare for the next pandemic with a commission to kill #NeverNeeded regulations
The coronavirus pandemic needs a long-term policy response.
Blog
The #NeverNeeded Regulatory Reduction Commission
In a new Washington Examiner op ed, CEI Senior Fellow Ryan Young proposes a Regulatory Reduction Commission to act as a permanent watchdog to prevent #NeverNeeded…
Forbes
Phase 4 Coronavirus Infrastructure Spending To Start At $2 Trillion
There’s still a chance for what next juggernauts America’s way to be made more sensible. We can liberalize infrastructure and the regulation of it rather than…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Coronavirus deaths topped 1,000 in the U.S. last week, while new cases continued to double every few days. Meanwhile, agencies issued new final regulations ranging…
Blog
VIDEO: Reforming Antitrust for Global Competitiveness
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation recently hosted its latest virtual event, “Reforming Antitrust Policy for an Era of Global Competitiveness.” ITIF President Rob Atkinson…
Blog
Regulation, Not Offshoring, Is Hindering Industry from Ramping up Production
In his latest Bloomberg column, Noah Smith argues that offshoring production led to the current shortage of medical masks and equipment in the face of…
News Release
CEI Experts Blast Attempts to Politicize COVID-19 Relief Bill
While the nation suffers, Washington has descended into an unseemly squabble over the latest COVID-19 relief bill. Politicians from all quarters are attempting to expand…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Governments are responding to the coronavirus with a getting rid of harmful regulations on restaurants, schools, and stores. Most of these rules were never needed…
Blog
Getting Rid of #NeverNeeded Regulations Hindering Coronavirus Response
What can Washington do to minimize harm from the coronavirus? Some of the best policy responses are coming not from imposing new regulations, but from…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was a rough week. Coronavirus infections and deaths continued to climb. Wall Street is officially in a bear market, and Congress and President Trump…
Blog
As Supreme Court Debates CFPB Constitutionality, Agency Accountability Hangs in the Balance
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week over the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and whether, as currently structured, it is too…
The Washington Times
Applying the Lenten Season to the World of Politics and Government
February 26 marked the beginning of Lent, a penitential time of 40 days in the Christian calendar in which we reflect on our mortality and…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Coronavirus continued to spread, the Democratic presidential field significantly narrowed, and the former head of the UAW was charged with embezzlement. Meanwhile, agencies issued new…
Blog
A One-Stop Executive Order 13891 Guidance Document Portal
If agencies are required to compile and list all their sub-regulatory guidance documents and post, link and consistently index them on a portal, can we…
Blog
EPA, Interior, and other Federal Agencies Post Guidance Documents on Searchable Websites
On February 28, the EPA and other federal agencies posted all their guidance documents on searchable websites, complying with an OMB deadline to implement Executive…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The coronavirus outbreak began to infect financial markets as well as people, with stock markets having their worst week since at least 2008. The number…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
During the four-day week, Lawrence Tesler passed away. The underappreciated inventor created the cut, copy, and paste functions on computers. The Hair Club for Men…
Forbes
We’re Not Biased, We’re Liberals: How Cultural Leftism Will Slant Social Media Regulation
As debates over bias, harm, misinformation and election interference on social media unfold, it will be interesting to watch whether or not mainstream media opposes…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Spring Training began for all 30 Major League Baseball teams, bringing joy across the nation. Meanwhile, agencies issued new final regulations ranging from grains ounce…
Forbes
We’re Not Biased, We’re Liberals: How Cultural Leftism Will Slant Social Media Regulation
“Water? What’s water?” —The fish As debates over bias, harm, misinformation and election interference on social media unfold, it will be interesting to…
Blog
A Partial Inventory of Federal Agency Guidance Documents Before Trump’s Official Compendium Comes Due
Reporting on "regulatory dark matter" is still falling short.
Washington Examiner
Trump: Slashing Regulations Boosted Economy More Than Tax Cuts
Washington Examiner cites senior fellow Clyde Wayne Crews on Trump-era regulations: What’s more, CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews reported that the administration issued…
Washington Examiner
One Nation, Ungovernable: Trump White House Releases Fiscal Year 2021 Federal Budget
There has not been a federal budget surplus since Bill Clinton was president. Not long ago, President Trump’s New Foundation for American…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The impeachment trial ended the way everyone expected, the State of the Union address happened, and the coronavirus outbreak intensified. Agencies issued new final regulations…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The impeachment trial continued, Brexit happened, President Trump signed the USMCA trade agreement, and the 2020 Federal Register topped 5,000 pages. Agencies issued new final…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Register had a four-day week due to Martin Luther King Day, but agencies still found time to issue new final regulations ranging from…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
In a busy week, President Trump signed Phase One of a trade agreement with China on Wednesday. On Thursday, the Senate ratified the USMCA trade…
Issues & Insights
Why Trump’s Dishwasher Diatribe Matters
Issues & Insights cites CEI’s dishwasher petition to the DOE: The Competitive Enterprise Institute compiled data on dishwasher cycle times since 1983, using numbers…
Blog
Despite Naysayers, Consumer Finance Panelists are Uniquely Qualified to Tackle Barriers to Financial Inclusion
Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection announced the membership of the newly created Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law, which will work to “harmonize and…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The new year started off with a literal bang, though as of this writing the worst Iran scenario seems to have been avoided. The Senate…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy New Year, everyone. We’re doing a slightly different format this week, on account of the new year starting mid-week. With just two days’ worth…
Issues & Insights
Trump White House Quietly Releases Overdue Regulatory Cost-Benefit Reports
The long-standing presumption that national top-down regulation of the economy from Washington brings substantial net benefits dominates public policy. But how much timely review of federal…
USA Today
Has Trump Fulfilled His Pledge to Turbocharge Job Growth, Revive Manufacturing? Many Say No
USA Today cites CEI on regulatory reform and the Trump administration: The Trump administration has scrapped dozens of environmental, labor, financial and other…
The Washington Examiner
Unconstitutionality Index: Swamp Imposed 20 Regulations for Every Law over Decade
The Washington Examiner cites Vice President for Policy Clyde Wayne Crews on the “Unconstitutionality Index.” In detailing his “Unconstitutionality Index,” Clyde…
Forbes
Trump’ Year In Regulation, 2019
Today, Tuesday, December 31, 2019, is the last federal workday of the year. This presents an opportunity to review the heft of the Federal Register and its…
Forbes
The 2020 Unconstitutionality Index: 28 Federal Rules And Regulations For Every Law Congress Passes
Even in a presidential administration bent on cutting regulation (see my 2019 overview), the number of rules from hundreds of federal agencies …
Blog
How Much Federal Regulation Was There in 2019?
Happy New Year, everyone. Now that 2019 is in the books, we have some data on how much new regulation hit the books. Note that…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Federal workers got a three-day week as a Christmas present this year. Agencies still put out 323 notices, 50 proposed regulations, and 1,342 Federal Register…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress finished the year with a bang. In a two day span the House impeached the president and passed the USMCA trade agreement. Both chambers…
Blog
Sugarplums or Lumps of Coal? White House’s 192 Big Rules in Pipeline Herald More Regulation than Deregulation
No matter the presidential administration, every year there are thousands of federal rules and regulations compared to a relative handful of laws passed by Congress.
Blog
What Regulations Did Trump Administration Add in 2019?
The Trump administration recently issued “Regulatory Reform Results for Fiscal Year 2019.” This is its fiscal year 2019 status update on the one-in, two-out directive initiated in Executive…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Britain held a major election, and the U.S. House of Representatives is set to impeach President Trump. At the same time, Trump is poised for…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The House began preparing articles of impeachment, President Trump announced new tariffs against three allies, a NATO summit was surprisingly contentious, and the federal government…
Blog
What Regulations Did the Trump Administration Eliminate in 2019?
The Trump administration has issued its fiscal year 2019 status update on one-in, two-out. It’s called “Regulatory Reform Results for Fiscal Year 2019.” According to…
The Wall Street Journal
A Republican Proposal to Feed the Country to the Swamp
Progressives dream of making the District of Columbia into a state, but now a pair of Republican senators have the same vision reflected through a…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
While the nation celebrated Thanksgiving with family and friends, rulemaking agencies published new regulations ranging from almond information to missile accidents.
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