Category Archives: Reform

In a new CEI video, Kent Lassman talks about three things agencies can do rein in regulations that are hindering the COVID-19 response and making economic recovery even harder. Congress should establish an independent regulatory reduction commission. Agencies should go over their own rules and policies and prune them. And new rules should have automatic sunsets

On their own, members of Congress have neither the incentive nor the ability to thoroughly trim regulations. So, they should do what they did the last time they hit an impasse like this—establish an independent commission. When the Cold War ended and the military needed fewer bases, no one representative would vote to close the one in his or her district, even if the base’s resources would do more good if used differently, because they didn’t want to face the political backlash.

The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission solved the problem. It studied the situation and sent Congress a plan for which bases to keep and which to shrink or close. This was then put to an up-or-down vote, without possibility for amendment. The streamlining of the military worked. Individual members of Congress could avoid blame for specific base closures. And voters understood that if their base was affected by BRAC, it was a fair decision made for a good reason. Four rounds of BRAC saved billions of dollars.

We should do something similar for regulation. In fact, the idea has been around since the early 1980s, when Sen. Phil Gramm proposed a version of it. After other occasional proposals from both parties, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) has just proposed her version of a regulatory BRAC. It’s a good idea, and it’s being taken seriously. With regulations harming the coronavirus response and the economy, now is the time to act on it.

Agencies should also so their own housework. Executive orders from President Trump have required agencies to get rid of two old rules for each new rule they enact; publish guidance documents in a single, searchable place in order to fight against the problem of regulatory “dark matter;” and most recently, to encourage agencies to use their emergency powers to wave rules that are getting in the way of an effective COVID response.

Finally, new regulations should have automatic sunsets. Just as cartons of milk have an expiration date, so should regulations. Times change; regulations often don’t. This rule would give agencies an incentive to periodically revisit and modernize their rules. Letting obsolete or harmful ones go is as simple as doing nothing; this is a fitting setup for a Congress that is rarely brave enough to take a stand on anything.

Please share the video on social media. For more on these proposals, see my recent paper “How to Make Sure Reformed #NeverNeeded Regulations Stay That Way.” More ideas are at neverneeded.cei.org.

Regulatory reform is one of the most important weapons there is for fighting COVID-19 and for aiding the economic recovery after the worst passes. But with 1.1 million regulatory restrictions and 185,000 pages of rules at the federal level alone, where should policy makers start? This handy infographic shows policy makers and regulators what to look for. If a rule meets one or more of these guidelines, it is probably a #NeverNeeded regulation.

• It slows distribution of proved medical diagnostic tests and services.
• It blocks patients’ remote access to medical providers.
• It increases the cost of energy at a time when people can least afford it.
• It makes it more difficult to hire employees.
• It adds another layer of bureaucracy or complexity to legal compliance.
• It blocks access to capital for both consumers and businesses.

A good rule of thumb is that if a regulation isn’t needed now, during a pandemic, then it probably was never needed in the first place.

Getting rid of #NeverNeeded regulations should be a top priority for lawmakers and regulators. But it is also not enough. Regulatory sludge has been building up for decades. Federal agencies issue more than 3,000 new regulations in most years, and usually remove old or outdated rules only when forced to. Reforming the rulemaking process itself, so that it generates fewer #NeverNeeded rules going forward, will be essential to resilience against the next crisis. If net neutrality rules hadn’t been repealed, for example, people in the U.S. would have had to deal with congested, throttled networks, such as many Europeans have been dealing with. The transition to new technologies, such as telemedicine and Zoom meetings for students and workers, would have been more difficult, or even impossible.,

For more resources on identifying and reforming #NeverNeeded regulations, see neverneeded.cei.org.

On Monday, June 22 at 11:00 ET, CEI is holding a Zoom event on regulatory reform with Paul Ray, who heads the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs inside the Office of Management and Budget. That’s the agency most directly involved in monitoring the federal regulatory state.

Also speaking at the event are CEI president Kent Lassman, vice president for policy Wayne Crews, and me.

Registration is here. Afterwards, the event will be posted to YouTube. I’ll post a link when it’s up.