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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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 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…
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 significant”…
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Op-Eds
Democrats: There Is Such a Thing as Too Much Regulation
As Democrats take power in Congress, speculation has swirled around the question of why Republicans lost. But there is a factor – a…
News Release
District Smoking Ban Threatens Economic Liberty
Contact: Christine Hall, (202) 331-2258 Washington, D.C., January 2, 2007 – The District of Columbia today became the newest city in…
Op-Eds
Ford Tough
Most obituarists portrayed President Gerald Ford as a humble man with few ambitions, a great conciliator, a political moderate, an all around nice…
Op-Eds
Stop Bushing the Envelope
President Bush has several strengths, but negotiating with Congress isn't one of them. He wants to come across as the Goldilocks president. As he said…
Newsletter
The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News FINANCIAL REGULATION A U.S. District Court hears arguments in the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Free Enterprise Fund’s…
Op-Eds
Bad Politics at a Minimum
It's a cliche of politics that the name of a proposed bill or initiative depends largely on its name. (More on this later.)It's…
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