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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The week in regulations: Cyber sanctions and tinnitus relief devices
Inflation is now more than double the Federal Reserve’s target. The Iran war heated up again. Agencies issued new regulations ranging from vending stands to…
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Free the Economy podcast: Taxing the rich with Jared Walczak
In this week’s episode we cover America’s low-income churn, reforms to civil asset forfeiture, changes to vehicle emissions testing, a shout…
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The week in regulations: Bone void filler and halibut action
May’s job numbers were strong for the third month in a row, though job growth since Liberation Day remains under 100,000, for a labor force…
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Tort Law “to Make Law”
Full Document Available in PDF A recent little-noticed New York Times story says…
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Conflicting with Reality
Former New England Journal of Medicine editor Jerome Kassirer, in an August 1 Washington Post op-ed, argues that conflicts of interest in medical…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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