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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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…
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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”…
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Stealing You Blind: Plans for Future Theft
One of the themes of Stealing You Blind is how public sector unions have worked with politicians to organize an industrial-scale transfer of wealth…
Op-Eds
Catching Air Without NASA: How Will We Regulate Commercial Space Flight?
What if having a vibrant space program requires bypassing NASA? There exist great pressures for change despite NASA’s signature successes. The private experimental launches…
Tech News World
FCC Aims to Get Carriers’ Sticky Fingers Out of Customers’ Pockets
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We Need Regulators, Not Interveners
Most of what people call regulation doesn't have anything to with regular commerce. These kinds of rules are more accurately called interventions.
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Meet Your New Mom: Kathleen Sebelius and Cigarette Warnings
Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius recently made a revealing statement on how she perceives the role of government and her place within…
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A Peek Inside the Bureaucrat’s Mind
By now, this story about the city of Portland, Oregon, deciding to drain nearly 8 million gallons of water from one…
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