Forbes
Regulation Renovation: The Executive Order To Make Deregulation Permanent
The White House Office of Management and Budget’s new Streamlining the Review of Regulatory Actions memorandum signals a preferential stance toward deregulation, urging…
Forbes
Washington’s Hidden Rulebook: The 2025 Darklore Depository And The Case For Guidance Document Reform
Agencies also say “BOO” with guidance documents, statements of policy, memoranda, notices, bulletins, advisory opinions, directives, news releases, letters and even blog posts. We call…
Forbes
$1 Trillion And Counting: Do Federal Grants Sabotage Regulatory Reform?
There’s been much attention to Donald Trump’s streamlining and “deconstruction” of conventional notice-and-comment regulation this year – a campaign that includes…
Forbes
Small Business Regulation Is Cratering – Here’s The Hidden Catch
But during the Biden administration, red tape proliferated. The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council noted, for example, the toll from credit card…
Forbes
Turn Shutdown Theater Into A Slim-Down: Cut Spending And Regulation At Once
Looming federal government shutdowns should be treated as opportunities to cut both spending and regulation. So as we barrel toward a potential…
Forbes
Diary Of Deconstruction: Trump Releases Unified Agenda Of Federal Regulations
As the leaves begin to fall, the Trump administration has at last released Spring 2025 edition of the semiannual “Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and…
Forbes
When Washington Buys Intel, It Owns You Too
The past week has seen many decrying the folly of government picking winners in business. But the Trump administration’s announcement of an 8.9 percent …
Forbes
Rise Of The Unrule: Fewer Rules, Fewer Agencies, And No Apocalypse
There was Hollywood’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. Now meet Washington’s Year the Regulation Stopped. The end of July 2025 finds just 1,490 finalized regulations published…
Forbes
The Dreck Equation: A Drake Equation For Mapping The Hidden Universe Of Federal Regulation
Joe Biden’s 2024 regulatory big bang—106,109 Federal Register pages—shattered cosmic records. But the 3,000 notice-and-comment rules chronicled there every year and archived in…
Forbes
Trump’s Deregulation Score: Mid-Year Federal Rules Tally Is The Lowest Ever Recorded
After years of relentless compounding of federal rules and regulations and Federal Register pages–capped by Joe Biden’s self-proclaimed “whole-of-government” executive actions on the likes of DEI, ESG,…
Forbes
How The Big Beautiful Budget Bill Can Deliver Decisive Deregulation
Media coverage of the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill (BBB; see committee report) naturally focuses on the spending. And that…
Forbes
Trump Reforms Die Without An Abuse-Of-Crisis Prevention Act
Amid frustrations with interventionist elements of the Trump agenda—such as tariffs and revived antitrust zeal—many have nevertheless been encouraged by the renewed…
Forbes
Trump’s Deregulation Gains Muscle—But Is He Skipping Leg Day?
The Trump 2.0 era has been marked by some extraordinary executive orders aimed at deregulation. These include E.O.14,192’s one-in, ten-out initiative; E.O. 14219’s installation of DOGE…
Op-Eds
Will Congress Ever Take The Libertarian Win And Embrace Automatic Shutdown?
Congress is at it again. With the March 14, 2025, funding deadline looming, the House is debating a continuing resolution (CR) that would…
Forbes
A Banger Trump Executive Order Abolishing Regulatory Dark Matter
“[A] loathsome night-spawned flood of organic corruption more devastatingly hideous than the blackest conjurations of mortal madness and morbidity. Seething, stewing, surging, bubbling like serpents’…
Forbes
Biden’s Regulatory Big Bang: A Parting Gift Trump Is Set To Return
Just as the incoming Trump administration promised to repeal “foolish” and “radical” Biden executive actions—and issue so many executive orders on day one…
Forbes
The 2025 Unconstitutionality Index: Exposing Congress’s Abdication Of Power
One of the themes of the incoming Trump administration is that federal administrative agencies, rather than the elected Congress, write most laws. This contradicts the…
Forbes
Shutdowns Aren’t The Problem, They’re The Solution
Federal shutdowns—along with the debt limit like that the Republicans sought to extend in the American Relief Act (ARA)—may represent the last remaining…
Forbes
White House Releases Fall 2024 Unified Agenda Of Federal Regulatory And Deregulatory Actions
Federal departments and agencies have highlighted their rulemaking priorities in the (usually) twice yearly Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions since the early 1980s. This…
Forbes
Darklore Depository 2024: A Halloween Inventory Of Federal Agency Guidance Documents
The U.S. Code archives federal laws. The 186,000-page Code of Federal Regulations is where rules from the daily Federal Register are embalmed. As spirits would have it,…
Forbes
Exposing Loopholes: How Federal Regulatory Oversight Laws Are Being Ignored
Passing new laws to reform and streamline the administrative state is important, and reformers consistently call for such oversight. But just as critical is ensuring that…
Forbes
Emergency Powers Can Reduce Rather Than Expand Government
With back-to-back natural weather disasters dominating headlines, the use of federal emergency powers has become a focal point. It’s important to recognize that these powers,…
Forbes
The Surprising Deregulation Legacy Of Jimmy Carter—And Why It Still Matters
In the Wall Street Journal, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm shared a compelling account of how President Jimmy Carter—who turns 100 October 1—has not received …
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. and Ryan Young: America’s regulatory burden cost your family almost $16,000 a year
Most American families spend more on regulatory compliance than they do on food, education, or any other expense besides housing. From zoning and permit restrictions…
The Virginian-Pilot
Column: Reducing regulations assists American families and the economy
Most American families spend more on regulatory compliance than they do on food, education or any other expense besides housing, according to a new report.
National Review
Does Capitalism Really Need ‘Changing’?
In her influential book Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, economist Mariana Mazzucato argues that capitalism is in crisis…
Forbes
Small Business, Big Government Intervention
Certain official proclamations in recent weeks have highlighted an unnerving shift in the federal government’s relationship with America’s small businesses. This novel stance undermines the…
Forbes
Confronting A Surge In Costly Federal Rules
As of Monday, May 13, there have been 1,148 rules and regulations finalized among the 41,830 pages published to date in the 2024 Federal Register. Page…
Forbes
There Is No Earth Day Without Private Conservation
Today is Earth Day, and NPR and the rest of the media are celebrating government and its environmental laws such as the Endangered…
Forbes
Model Legislation On Artificial Intelligence To Regulate Government, Not Big Tech
While there’s considerable chatter, Congress seems unlikely to enact legislation regulating artificial intelligence (AI) this election year. The wait can be worth it, though. There…
Forbes
Libertarian Victory: You Mean We Can Shut Down Government Without Even Passing A Law?
It is happening again. Congress will enact another bloated, pork-laden and largely unread omnibus spending bill to complete formal appropriations for the 2024 fiscal year…
Forbes
The GAO Weighs In On Regulatory Reform Options For Congress
The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) December 2023 Options for Enhancing Congressional Oversight of Rulemaking and Establishing an Office of Legal Counsel ought not be overlooked by Congress,…
Forbes
Spiraling Debt Demands Bipartisan Mobilization To Terminate Federal Departments And Agencies
In a federal government seemingly incapable of sticking to the necessary and proper, 2024 interest payments on debt topping $34 trillion are set to surpass defense spending as well as Medicare…
Forbes
Biden Releases Fall 2023 Unified Agenda Of Federal Regulations
Since the early 1980s, federal departments and agencies have highlighted rulemaking priorities (not a complete inventory) in the (mostly) twice-yearly …
Forbes
Congress Must Halt The Ascendance Of Regulation By Subsidy
Excessive regulation is one of those perennial Washington issues, which makes sense given that Washington pops out new rules like chocolate bunnies. A …
Forbes
Net Neutrality Resurfaces To Join The Bidenomics Regulatory Costberg
“It was always about government control.” —Commissioner Brendan Carr, Federal Communications Commission Open Meeting, October 2023 Just in time for Halloween, “net neutrality”…
Forbes
A New Shot At Enlisting The Office Of Management And Budget In Regulatory Streamlining
Congressional leadership on regulatory streamlining is more urgent than ever in the wake of a post-Covid legislative flurry and attendant regulatory pressures soon to be…
Real Clear Markets
Barbie, Hot Wheels, and the Market for Lemons
The Barbie movie is more than a bit of good fun. It also teaches an economics lesson about lemons—the old slang term for defective goods, not the…
Forbes
Federal Paperwork Hours Consume The Equivalent Of 14,883 Human Lifetimes Annually
The White House Office of Management and Budget has this year issued catch-up editions of Information Collection Budget of the United States Government, a task in…
Forbes
Regulatory Reforms Belong In The FY2024 Budget Deal
Certain regulatory reforms with deep bipartisan endorsement should be incorporated into contentious fiscal budget agreements, particularly when spending cuts are difficult (which is always). We’re…
Forbes
Once-Promising Guidance Document Disclosures Are Stagnating Under Biden: Inventory and Observations
Laws passed by Congress are archived by subject matter in the U.S. Code. The rules and regulations that incubate in the daily Federal…
Forbes
Congress Should Confront Significant Rules And Regulations Obscured By “Bidenomics”
This past week, the number of rules and regulations in the 2023 Federal Register crossed the 2,000 mark. At 59,438 pages today, the tally will top 60,000…
Forbes
Beware: The Biden Administration Refers To “Economically Significant” Regulations In The Past Tense
The past few days have brought renewed attention to Biden’s Executive Order 14,094 on “Modernizing…
Forbes
Careful: Misbegotten Government-Business “Blueprints” Can Lobotomize Artificial Intelligence
Atop numerous directives and another of Washington’s periodic “Bill of Rights” proclamations misconstruing who is protected from what by such documents,…
Forbes
Biden’s Competition Council Targets Free Enterprise, Expands Government
Joe Biden’s Competition Council, created by his executive order dubbed “Promoting Competition In the American Economy,” celebrated its second anniversary and convened its …
Forbes
Biden’s Top-Down Economy, Powered By Executive Action
Joe Biden didn’t take a Juneteenth break, instead heading to Palo Alto to tout “historic action to combat the climate crisis,…
Forbes
Congress Should Halt OMB’s Rewrite Of Circular A-4 Guidance On Regulatory Cost-Benefit Analysis
People love to gripe about red tape; but not only is there a method to the madness, there’s a certain madness to the method these…
Forbes
A Congressional Regulatory Report Card Can Begin to Address Biden’s New Attempts to Downplay Regulatory Costs
The Federal Register website, portals like Regulations.gov and other online databases make it far easier than in pre-Internet times to acquire information on the assortment of federal…
Forbes
Congress Must Mobilize To Halt Biden’s Radical Administrative State Transformation
[T]he genius of the Progressives in the late 19th century was to preempt or push large sectors of the emerging future (the environment,…
Forbes
Regulatory Reform’s Role In Addressing The Debt Limit
Spring is here, the first quarter is over, and the federal debt limit is back in play. Again. The cap was last …