Ten Thousand Commandments in the news

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The 2024 edition of Wayne Crews's Ten Thousand Commandments is out now. For those not familiar, the report puts together a big-picture view of the regulatory state, similar to the federal government's fiscal budget. How many total regulations are on the books, and how much do these cost? How many new rules took effect last year? How many are in the pipeline? Which agencies are most active? Wayne answers those questions, and pairs them with reform ideas.

In an op-ed being syndicated by Gannett, Wayne and I discuss some bills active in Congress right now that are based on those reform ideas. One of them is the GOOD Act, which would track guidance documents and other informal agency regulating:

The GOOD Act has already passed the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs unanimously with bipartisan support. Though Biden rescinded the original Trump Order, he has signaled that he would sign the GOOD Act if it reaches his desk.

Another is a bill to create an independent commission tasked with a deep clean of the 188,000-page Code of Federal Regulations:

Neither Congress nor agencies are interested in cleaning out obsolete, redundant, and harmful rules from this massive stockpile. One solution is to outsource the job.

The Locating the Inefficiencies of Bureaucratic Edicts to Reform And Transform the Economy (LIBERATE) Act, sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee, R-UT, would create an independent commission, inspired by the successful 1990s BRAC commissions that closed unneeded military bases after the Cold War ended. This bipartisan commission would assemble a package of unneeded rules to Congress for an up-or-down vote.

Read the whole piece here. The full Ten Thousand Commandments report is here.