Members of Congress: Show Your Support for Reducing Regulatory Barriers by Signing On to CEI’s Principles to Cut Red Tape

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Even though the economic impacts of regulation are largely unaccounted for, regulatory compliance takes hundreds of billions of dollars out of the U.S. economy annually. This hidden tax costs American households thousands of dollars. 

We have a separation of powers crisis. Unelected federal agency personnel now do the bulk of actual lawmaking. In 2017, Congress enacted 97 laws, while agencies issued 3,281 rules. That’s 34 rules issued for every law. Over the past decade, the average has been 28 rules for each law enacted.

Federal agencies also routinely circumvent the Administrative Procedure Act, the law that requires them to provide the opportunity for public comment during the regulatory process. Instead, agencies issue “regulatory dark matter” – thousands of guidance documents, memoranda, notices, and other items – that carries regulatory weight but is difficult to find, understand, and measure.

Regulatory Dark Matter is backdoor regulation that harms American consumers and job creators. It’s hard to find, difficult to understand, and impossible to measure.

Congress should adopt reforms to address these problems.

Encourage

Innovation

Free up businesses drowning in red tape by reining in over-regulation and "regulatory dark matter."

Reassert Constitutional Authority

Reassert Article I constitutional authority over lawmaking by improving regulatory oversight.

Reform the Bureaucracy

Hold agencies accountable by requiring them to provide more transparency and data regarding regulatory activity.

1. Reassert its Article I constitutional authority over lawmaking by improving regulatory oversight and resisting delegation of its legislative authority to the executive branch.
2. Hold agencies accountable for their activities and improve disclosure by requiring agencies to present complete data regarding regulation and regulatory activity – rule counts, significance, and costs – to Congress and the American public. 
3. Survey the existing body of regulations and statutes in order to reduce red tape. 
4. Reduce final rules and pages in the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations insofar as these correlate to regulatory burden.
5. Withhold appropriations for agency initiatives that Congress has not approved, so that agencies do not regulate in areas that Congress has not clearly authorized. 
6. Require sunset provisions in agency rules so that effective rules can be kept and ineffective rules can expire. 
7. Rein in overregulation via “regulatory dark matter” by requiring disclosure of all guidance documents issued by federal agencies.

Congress should:

Canyon Brimhall, Government Affairs Manager

Members of Congress who wish to sign on to CEI's Principles to Cut Red Tape can contact Canyon Brimhall for more information.

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