Category Archives: Publications

Today marks the release of the twentieth anniversary edition of Ten Thousand Commandments, Wayne Crews’ annual overview of the regulatory state. Over at the Daily Caller, Wayne and I briefly summarize of few of the report’s findings. Here’s a taste:

Since the first edition of Ten Thousand Commandments was published in 1993, a touch less than 1.43 million Federal Register pages have been published. That’s an average of 71,470 pages per year. Considering that an average year has 250 workdays (the Federal Register is not published on weekends or holidays), that roughly averages out to 286 pages per day. It takes a very busy federal government to fill that many pages each and every workday.

We also ran a few numbers and found something very interesting:

A standard ream of 20-pound weight paper, standard for office use, is about two inches thick. From that, we can calculate that our 1.43 million-page stack would be 476 feet tall. It would also weigh more than seven tons. Fittingly, this regulatory tower would rival the Washington Monument’s 555 feet for supremacy of Washington’s skyline. In fact, if the tower were to keep growing at its 20-year average pace, it would surpass the Washington Monument in 2016.

Read the whole thing here. And read the new Ten Thousand Commandments here.

In today’s Investor’s Business Daily, Wayne Crews and I point out that the higher deficits go, the more tempting it becomes for Congress to resort to unfunded mandates:

For example,instead of funding a new federal job training program from federal coffers, Congress could mandate that all firms above a certain size provide such training at their own expense.

The first option appears on the federal budget; the second does not. For politicians, it’s the perfect scheme. The government can spend — or, rather, force others to spend — as much as it wants without adding to the deficit.

The U.S. isn’t the only place in need of some regulatory housecleaning. Nor is it the only place that has some good ideas for doing so. Over at the Daily Caller, Christian Rice and I take a look at a successful model in the UK: the Red Tape Challenge:

Every few weeks, the British government publishes regulations on a government website focusing on a specific area of the economy. The public then submits comments as to which regulations in that sector are unnecessary or overly burdensome. People can also recommend ways to improve the rules or even eliminate them entirely.

The departments that administer these regulations then collect these Red Tape Challenge comments and use them to develop specific regulatory policy proposals.

There are a few more steps after that. The point is that adding public participation to a sector where there is currently almost none has worked out quite well. Read the whole thing here.

Regulatory agencies need to be much more transparent. One way to do that is through an annual report card with important information about each agency such as how many rules it has in the books, how many more are on the way, and what they cost. Since agencies aren’t doing this on their own, CEI is taking up the mantel.

In the FCC report card, released today, previously scattered information is put together in one place. The FCC has over 25,000 specific regulatory restrictions in the Code of Federal Regulations, and they cost an estimated $142 billion. It issued 108 final regulations last year, and 86 more were published in the most recent Unified Agenda, which lists upcoming rules.

For more information, read the whole thing here. If you want the quick version, here’s a press release.

In 2011, agencies finalized 47 times as many regulations as Congress passed laws. This is anti-democratic. Over at the American Spectator, Wayne Crews and I show just how bad the problem of regulation without representation is by using Wayne’s handy Anti-Democracy Index. Then we suggest that the REINS Act, recently reintroduced in the House by Rep. Todd Young (no relation), would help reduce the problem:

Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.) has just introduced the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny REINS Act (H.R. 367), which would only require Congress to vote on rules expected to cost $100 million or more per year (perhaps recognizing that it might be a bit much to ask Congress for individual votes on 3,500-plus rules every year). It would still increase Congress’ workload — there are 224 such rules at various stages of the rulemaking process right now — but it would also increase congressional accountability. As tradeoffs go, this is a good deal.

Read the whole thing here.

Some stories don’t get the press they deserve. When it comes to government transparency, it is essential to throw at least some sunlight on the problem. Over at the Daily Caller, Wayne Crews try to do just that:

Every spring and fall, as certain as the turning of the seasons, the General Services Administration’s Regulatory Information Service Center (RISC) issues a new edition of the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Or it did, until this year. Published in the Federal Register around April and October of every year, the Unified Agenda is one of the more important transparency measures we have for keeping an eye on federal regulations (available online at RegInfo.gov). In it, rulemaking agencies disclose what rules they have at various stages of the regulatory pipeline, along with rules likely to move in the near future.

The problem is that it’s now October, and neither the spring nor the fall 2012 editions of the Unified Agenda have been published. The most recent edition we have is that of fall 2011, and even that was published late.

This might not be a particularly sexy issue (hence the lack of coverage), but it’s very important. The Unified Agenda is one of the most important transparency measures that we have for keeping an eye on regulations.

Read the whole thing here.

I missed most of yesterday’s debate. My wife and I thought it would be more intellectually stimulating to see a play about professional wrestling instead. After reading some of the coverage this morning, we were right.

The main reason is that both candidates missed the opportunity to talk about one of the most important issues facing America today: regulation. In a piece that ran yesterday over at Fox Business, Wayne Crews and I try to tell both candidates that regulatory reform is a winning issue not just for economic recovery and innovation, but with voters:

In this election, voters are paying more attention than usual to the broader issue of the size and role of government. Interestingly, a growing segment of the public seems to believe that government is too big and tries to do too much. And one of the biggest vehicles for government growth is regulation. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney would do well to acknowledge that fact with a bit more than the usual lip service…

Transparency resonates with voters across the political spectrum. In short, measuring and controlling regulation can be a winning issue. It would be nice to hear one (or both!) of the candidates acknowledge as much on national television.