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
The week in regulations: Drone settlements and gambling losses
The 2026 Federal Register topped 20,000 pages. President Trump got into a feud with the Pope. Agencies issued new regulations ranging from mail standards to…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: How to Get What You Want with Josh Bandoch
In this week’s episode we cover AI development in China, how large investors recycle homes, and why permitting reform needs to…
Issues and Insights
After Iran, Trump Needs To Bomb The Administrative State Into Submission
Issues and Insights cites CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews on the release of his new report, the 2026 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments. “The regulatory tax of…
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Newsletter
The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News 1. TECHNOLOGY Big technology companies lobby Washington for data privacy legislation. CEI Experts Available…
Op-Eds
Time for a virtual games Declaration of Independence
Some say online virtual reality operations like “Second Life” have attained the stage of evolution that blogging and the Net itself occupied several…
Newsletter
The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News 1. INTERNATIONAL The European Union approves a new law, known as “REACH,” regulating the manufacture…
News Release
SEC Drops the Ball on Sarbanes-Oxley
Contact: Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273 Washington, D.C., December 13, 2006—The Competitive Enterprise Institute today criticized the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to provide meaningful…
Newsletter
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…
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