COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

Government regulations are based on laws, and those laws in turn rest on the limited powers granted to government by the Constitution. Whether these constitutional limits succeed in actually reining in government is one of the basic issues facing our country. This is where CEI's legal expertise comes in.

Since 1986, CEI has engaged in strategic litigation on regulatory issues, in areas ranging from free speech to environmental mandates and health care policy to financial regulation. This includes court challenges to both Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank Act. CEI’s legal team works to defend the Constitution, protect the rule of law, and bring transparency and accountability to the regulatory state.

The growth of the nanny state has been unprecedented in recent years as myriad, seemingly minor regulations—ranging from beverage taxes and bake-sale bans to plastic bag taxes and bans—have together come to have large impact on our freedoms. The result isn’t a safer, more secure world as government advocates suggest; it’s a poorer, less fair one with diminished freedom. CEI’s nanny state project pushes back on these trends by highlighting the impacts of these regulations and advancing policies to reverse them.

America’s thriving technology and telecom sectors are not immune from government regulation. From the Federal Communications Commission to the Department of Justice, many high-tech firms face varying degrees of regulatory intervention.

From foods and agriculture, to pharmaceuticals and medical care, to consumer products and automobile safety, few policy issues are as important to the public as the regulation of health and safety. People often rely on government regulators to assure the safety and quality of many of the products they use and consume, but government regulation can often compromise safety, quality, affordability, and choice if it focuses on a fear-driven activist agenda rather than basic principles of science and risk-balancing. Too often, the government’s regulatory agenda favors politically expedient outcomes over those that would actually promote safety and availability. Safety and health regulations should be designed with maximum flexibility to allow producers to use the production methods and labeling information that best meets their customers’ demands.

In the United States, the rise of automobility had a profound impact on economic opportunity and prosperity, particularly among historically disadvantaged groups such as women and minorities. Yet automobility, as well as air travel and freight rail, are increasingly threatened with further regulation that will reduce their ability to transport goods and people. CEI opposes these attacks by arguing for greater freedom in mobility and opposing perverse transport industry regulations.

The Center for Advancing Capitalism engages both businesspeople and free market intellectuals in the fight for liberty by building “Doer-Thinker” alliances. Through research, writing, events, and other outreach activities, the Center works to recapture for capitalism the moral legitimacy it has always merited. Competitive Enterprise Institute founder and president emeritus Fred L. Smith, Jr. directs the Center, bringing over 40 years of public policy experience and expertise to this formidable task.

CEI's largest program takes on all the hard energy and climate issues. CEI questions global warming alarmism, makes the case for access to affordable energy, and opposes energy-rationing policies, including the Paris Climate Treaty, Kyoto Protocol, cap-and-trade legislation, and EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. CEI also opposes all government mandates and subsidies for conventional and alternative energy technologies.

In today’s world, goods, services, capital and people move across most national borders and are much more closely integrated in the global economy. Increased world trade has been one engine behind the dramatic increase in global prosperity since the 1950s. However, trade liberalization is increasingly threatened by special interests seeking to protect their domestic industries from increased competition.

The scope of federal government spending, deficits, and the national debt is staggering — but so is the cost of federal regulations. In fact, the cost of federal regulation exceeds half of what the U.S. federal government spends annually.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the federal regulatory state, Ten Thousand Commandments, points out: regulations impose enormous burdens on American consumers, businesses, and the economy. Unnecessary and meddlesome overregulation and intervention create uncertainty that slows innovation and economic growth. But unfortunately, regulations get little attention in policy debates. Unlike taxes, they are difficult to quantify because they are unbudgeted and often indirect.
Ten Thousand Commandments seeks to fill this information gap, compiling the best available government and private data on these costs. By making the size and scope of America’s regulatory state more comprehensible this annual report underscores the need for more transparency, a better review process and more cost-benefit analyses for new and current federal regulations. CEI shines a light on this growing “hidden tax” of regulation, thus holding legislators and regulators accountable for the regulatory costs Washington bureaucrats impose on Americans, while also offering policy solutions for how Congress can roll back this red tape.