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
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”…
Search Posts
Op-Eds
Fear Factor
Environmental activists seeking to halt the worldwide spread of the advanced technologies they fear see <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />China…
Op-Eds
Obesity: a Sign We’re Doing Things Right
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson recently designated obesity a disease, with all the negative implications that entails. Our society, crippled, it seems,…
Op-Eds
Bookshelf: Fighting Disease Is Only Half the Battle
As a fresh-faced medical intern, a colleague of mine once greeted a new patient with a breezy, “So what’s your problem?” “Oh, just a touch…
Op-Eds
California Wine vs. Two-Legged Pests
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />California is under attack by parasites, of both the six-legged and two-legged variety. The former are…
Op-Eds
Tort Law ‘to Make Law’
A recent little-noticed New York Times story says a great deal about <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />America's current legal climate:…
Op-Eds
RFID Tags and Privacy
Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology promises many consumer benefits. With RFID, goods on trucks, in trains, and in warehouses can be inventoried without unloading…
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