Here's How Financial And Other Regulators Are Issuing Rules Without Writing Them

Forbes / Clyde Wayne Crews

 

At the end of June I testified in a U.S. Senate Homeland Security Regulatory oversight subcommittee hearing on Examining the Use of Agency Regulatory Guidance. Federal agencies, it turns out (probably not to your surprise) are now overusing so-called “Guidance Documents” to sneak around the normal written public notice-and-comment rulemaking process set up for agencies to democratically rather than unilaterally issue substantive new regulations (the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946)........Last year I took a partial numerical inventory of what I’ve taken to calling ”regulatory dark matter,” but in preparation for this hearing, I was struck by the prominent examples of this phenomenon that sweep across the federal government.

Below is an overview, with links to many, of some conspicuous recent executive and independent agency guidance documents. I list these in part to make the case that the regulatory process is out of Congress’s control now, and Congress had best take its recent Task Force reports (on restoration of congressional powers under Article I, and on economic/regulatory liberalization) quite seriously as campaign season escalates and the state of the economy is debated.

Here we go:.....To Read More...