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
The week in regulations: Roadless areas and squid quotas
The national debt topped $40 trillion. Vice President JD Vance argued for ending the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. The Treasury Department…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Housing abundance and affordability with Luca Gattoni-Celli
In this week’s episode we cover J.D. Vance and the strength of the US dollar, how to track extreme weather events,…
Study
The Protection Paradox
The everyday American expects certain basic services from her government. She expects her roads to be maintained, her mail to be delivered, and her…
Search Posts
News Release
CEI Supports Legislation from Sen. Rick Scott to Cut Back on Outdated, Duplicative, and Unnecessary Rules
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) recently introduced the Unnecessary Agency Regulations Act, a bill that directs the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations: Tea Experts and Coin Batteries
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited America. The federal government is a week away from a potential partial shutdown. Sen. Bob Menendez was…
Blog
Flawed guidance for monetizing nature should be withdrawn
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has proposed new guidance aimed at improving how federal agencies account for environment-related costs…
Forbes
Regulatory Reforms Belong In The FY2024 Budget Deal
Certain regulatory reforms with deep bipartisan endorsement should be incorporated into contentious fiscal budget agreements, particularly when spending cuts are difficult (which is always).
Frederick News Post
A new proposal for constitutional restoration
Now that Congress has gotten past debt-ceiling drama, next up is wrangling the nation’s budget for the coming year. A budget is about…
Forbes
Once-Promising Guidance Document Disclosures Are Stagnating Under Biden: Inventory and Observations
Laws passed by Congress are archived by subject matter in the U.S. Code. The rules and regulations that incubate in the…
Forbes
Beware: The Biden Administration Refers To “Economically Significant” Regulations In The Past Tense
The past few days have brought renewed attention to Biden’s Executive Order 14,094 on…
Study
Four Principles for Real Permitting Reform
Federal legislators continue to focus on permitting reform. For example, the Senate is reportedly1 working on more ambitious reform than those recently enacted in…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: soybean standards and pain medication limits
The FTC issued its new draft merger guidelines. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from milk marketing to Postal Service snitches. On…
News Release
House Oversight and Accountability Committee unanimously advances regulatory reform legislation
Earlier today, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee advanced 41 to 0 the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act from Rep. James Comer…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: historical captain permits and apricot marketing
The Supreme Court agreed to hear CEI’s Moore v. U.S. tax case in its upcoming term. It also handed down rulings in controversial…
Daily Caller
Don’t Stop At College — End Race-Based Admissions In Public Schools
There’s an important battle brewing in our public schools between equity and treating students equally under the law. Equitable treatment of one class…
Blog
Bidenomics? Here are the 297 costliest rules in the president’s Spring 2023 Unified Agenda
Federal agencies issue thousands of rules, regulations and guidance documents every year compared to the relative handful of laws enacted by…
Comment
OMB’s Problematic Circular A-4 Rewrite
OUTLINE Discard the pro-regulatory bias of the federal government Restore regulatory streamlining prior to Circular A-4 rewrite Restore the $100 million threshold for…
Comment
CEI Comments on Proposed Circular A-4, Regulatory Analysis
Dear Administrator Revesz: I appreciate this opportunity to provide comments on the proposed Circular A-4, “Regulatory Analysis.”1 The focus of my comments is…
News Release
House passes sensible regulatory reform bills to shrink power of the administrative state
Earlier today, the House passed 220 to 211 the Separation of Powers Restoration Act (SOPRA) sponsored by Rep. Scott Fitzgerald…
Blog
New Biden White House Agenda shows 3,666 rules in regulatory pipeline
The Spring 2023 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions has been released. A fall version of this twice-yearly document will also contain…
News Release
U.S. House passes legislation to preserve consumer choice in kitchen appliances
The U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 1615 today, a bill that would protect Americans ability to choose the type of stove they want…
Blog
Congress should block Biden’s harmful environmental regulations with power of the purse
Congress shouldn’t sit back and watch as the Biden administration proposes and finalizes costly and harmful energy and environmental regulation. Instead, it needs to…
Blog
Do more deregulation in debt limit deal
The internal GOP debate this week is over lower-case “d” default if a June 6 deadline for an increase in the debt…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Transparency for government, privacy for people with Brian Hawkins
In this week’s episode we talk discuss Tim Carney’s view on why big government is good for big business, Stone Washington on…
Blog
Let’s get this huge ‘hidden tax’ of regulation out into the open
Smack dab in the middle of contentious debt limit negotiations, the House Budget Committee held another in its series of hearings on American economic…
Testimony
Testimony of Wayne Crews: Removing the Burdens of Government Overreach
I appreciate the opportunity to discuss issues surrounding Removing the Burdens of Government Overreach, and I thank Chairman Arrington, Ranking Member Boyle, and Members…
Blog
A remembrance: C. Boyden Gray, 1943-2023
We mourn the passing of C. Boyden Gray. He was a man of his family, the law, and his country. Boyden served in…
The Hill
Don’t give federal agencies carte blanche on regulations — make Congress vote
The Limit, Save, Grow Act, recently passed by the Republican House of Representatives, would raise the nation’s borrowing limit through March 31 of next year…
Forbes
Congress Should Halt OMB’s Rewrite Of Circular A-4 Guidance On Regulatory Cost-Benefit Analysis
People love to gripe about red tape; but not only is there a method to the madness, there’s a certain madness to the method…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: toy guns and trophy fisheries
The 2023 Federal Register topped 30,000 pages on May 8. New inflation numbers looked better on the surface, but actually got worse. A…
News Release
Economist James Broughel joins Competitive Enterprise Institute as senior fellow
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is pleased to welcome economist James Broughel as a Senior Fellow with a focus on innovation and dynamism. Dr.
Blog
Screw up the dishwashers, save the planet?
The Department of Energy (DOE) proposed more stringent energy and water efficiency standards for dishwashers Friday, despite the fact that the regulations currently…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: cloudy guidance documents and potato ledprona
The number of new final regulations this year topped 1,000 last week. It was the rare 3,000-page for the Federal Register, which will likely…
Blog
Regulatory reform in the 118th Congress: Regulatory Accountability Act
In 2003, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published Circular A-4. A-4 is little-known but crucial oversight measure for new regulations. It…
Blog
The week in ridiculous regulations: otter casualties and moving the goalpost
Fox News settled its defamation case over its false reporting on the 2020 election with voting machine maker Dominion. The Consumer Financial Protection…
Forbes
Congress Must Mobilize To Halt Biden’s Radical Administrative State Transformation
[T]he genius of the Progressives in the late 19th century was to preempt or push large sectors of the emerging future (the…
Blog
Congress shouldn’t party like it’s 2019 on national debt
Now comes the GOP’s turn to do its own version of a “lockdown.” Republicans should heed the advice of a member of the other party,…
News Release
House Republicans Helpfully Tie Government Reforms to Debit Limit Deal
House Republican leadership yesterday released the text of their debt limit deal which trades a suspension or increase in the debt limit for a…
National Review
No, Lockdown States Did Not Do Better
Many politicians, public-health figures, and media pundits continue to insist that the Covid lockdowns were a success and represent a blueprint for future pandemic responses.
Blog
Biden Executive Order Harms Transparency
The Biden administration recently issued an Executive Order making major changes to the regulatory system, although almost nobody noticed thanks to culture war…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Headline CPI inflation went down slightly, but a deeper look shows that things got slightly worse. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from…
Blog
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…
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…
Blog
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…
News Release
Biden’s ‘Modernizing Regulatory Review’ Executive Order Will Undermine Review
President Biden yesterday issued an “Executive Order on Modernizing Regulatory Review,” by which “modernizing” apparently means undermining transparency and disclosure and pushing a…
Forbes
Regulatory Reform’s Role In Addressing The Debt Limit
Spring is here, the first quarter is over, and the federal debt limit is back in play. Again. The cap was last …
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Finland, which borders Russia, is joining NATO. Former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations…
Forbes
The “Guidance Out Of Darkness Act” Is The Low-Hanging Fruit Of Regulatory Reform
We often marvel that we don’t actually know how many federal agencies exist. And the number of “commissions” and programs (many…
News Release
Senator Ron Johnson and 15 GOP Colleagues Introduce Guidance Out of Darkness Act in 118th Congress
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act this week, a bill aimed at bringing transparency to agency guidance…
Forbes
Laws Against Laws: A 118th Congress Regulatory Reform Agenda For Rightsizing Washington
It’s all right to be little-bitty. — Alan Jackson, “Little Bitty,” Everything I Love, 1996 It ought to be harder to enact…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Biden released a $6.8 trillion proposed budget. The labor force grew by 311,000 people in February. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations…
Blog
Regulatory Reform in the 118th Congress: The ALERT Act
Transparency is a vital part of good government. It is also lacking in the regulatory process. H.R. 262, The All Economic Regulations are…
News Release
Biden Budget Amounts to Top-Down Central Planning, Lacks Needed Reforms
President Biden today unveiled his latest budget submitted to Congress. CEI experts take a dim view of the agenda of excess spending and…
Staff & Scholars
Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation
Ryan Young
Senior Economist and Director of Publications
- 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
