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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The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News 1. HEALTH The Food and Drug Administration announces a plan to speed up access to…
Op-Eds
Should We Restrict Ourselves to the War of Ideas?
Economic liberalism faces a multi-front assault, an assault that has been underway for decades but that has intensified in recent years. As discussed in the…
Newsletter
The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News 1. TECHNOLOGY Tech companies lobby for federal data privacy regulation. CEI Expert Available to Comment: Vice President…
Op-Eds
New York City Bans Science
The New York City Board of Health this week banned the use of trans fats by restaurants. The decision is directly traceable back to…
Op-Eds
The Case Against Racial ‘Balancing’ Schemes
The editorial “A Different Race Case” argued that Seattle’s use of race in assigning students to schools should be upheld by the Supreme Court…
Op-Eds
Freedom Fighter
The war to advance economic liberty will last forever. The effort is frustrating and often discouraging. Many freedom fighters burn out, retire from the field,…
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