Competitive Enterprise Institute

CEI has led a coalition letter to move forward the GOOD Act (S.252), bipartisan legislation that would require federal agencies to post their guidance documents online in a searchable format. The bill already has unanimous committee support and passed the House by voice vote.

This is a rare, easy bipartisan win the Senate should take before the year is out. Read more:

Coalition urges Senate to pass major GOOD Act regulatory transparency bill - Competitive Enterprise Institute A coalition of free market and conservative organizations urged the Senate to prioritize passage this year of a regulatory reform bill called the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD) Act, S.252. While the law already requires formal agency rules to be publ...

Want cheaper housing without new subsidies?

CEI's Steve Swedberg highlights pre-approved building plans, they get approved once, then reused for future projects instead waiting for review. It cuts development costs by 1-2%, or thousands to tens of thousands of dollars per unit.

Even better, it's already working in South Bend, Seattle, and other cities. It is especially helpful for smaller builders and "missing middle" housing like duplexes. Read more: https://bit.ly/478zSef

Pre-approved plans can speed up housing without compromising health and safety - Competitive Enterprise Institute Housing affordability has renewed interest in removing unnecessary barriers to homebuilding. While much of the discussion has centered on land use and zoning regulations such as minimum lot sizes and floor area ratio limits, permitting itself often impo...

A coalition of 40 organizations, led by CEI's Iain Murray, is urging Congress to keep the Railway Safety Act's two-person crew mandate out of surface transportation reauthorization. The letter notes freight trains run on dedicated tracks, don't share roads or airways with the public, and don't carry passengers, unlike the transportation modes where crew-size rules already exist. Read the letter: https://bit.ly/4hvrSbZ

CEI Leads Coalition opposing the Railway Safety Act - Competitive Enterprise Institute The Honorable Shelley Moore Capito ChairmanEnvironment and Public Works CommitteeU.S. Senate The Honorable Ted Cruz ChairmanCommerce, Science, and Transportation CommitteeU.S. Senate The Honorable Tim Scott ChairmanBanking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Co...

New HTWW episode is live: Kevin Williamson sits down with Jon Meadows, a DC-area headshot photographer and former political staffer, to talk about his unusual career pivot, from getting fired from a political nonprofit to building a full-time photography business. They dig into facial-expression coaching, the financial strain of running a photography business through COVID, and whether AI-generated images threaten photographers' livelihoods. Listen:

Jon Meadows, the Headshot Photographer - How The World Works Kevin Williamson is joined by Jon Meadows, a DC-area headshot photographer and former political staffer. They discuss Meadows’ unusual path from politics into photography, including how being fired from a political nonprofit pushed him to build ou...

When Jimmy Kimmel wanted to interview a Texas Senate candidate, he put the interview on YouTube instead of his ABC broadcast — specifically to avoid the FCC's decades-old "equal time" rule.

CEI's Brian Rankin explains why that rule, created in 1934 for a world of scarce broadcast channels, no longer makes sense: the YouTube interview drew over 10 million views, more than triple Kimmel's broadcast audience, and the rule doesn't even apply to streaming, podcasts, or social media. Rankin argues it's time to repeal a rule that regulators can use to chill speech instead of encouraging debate. Read more:

Jimmy Kimmel and the FCC: No time for equal time - Competitive Enterprise Institute The Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) “equal time” rule aims to foster competing voices and ensure opportunities for debate. It was created in an era of scarce media options, when radio was the dominant means of electronic communication and tele...

Free money sounds good until you ask what it trains voters, and future politicians, to expect. That's the warning in CEI's Wayne Crews' new Daily Wire op-ed on Trump's proposed $5,000 dividend checks, which he argues risks normalizing unconditional government payments the same way COVID relief did, just without the emergency to justify it. Read more:

Trump's $5,000 Down Payment On The Entitlement State - Competitive Enterprise Institute Donald Trump's $5,000 “dividend” proposal to every U.S. adult should be taken seriously, not because the arithmetic has been worked out, since there isn't any, but because of what the idea represents. Trump equates the payout with a corporate distributi...

Did you know federal agencies are supposed to submit every new regulation to Congress and the GAO before it takes effect?

CEI's Wayne Crews found that many simply don't. In 2023-2024, roughly a quarter of Federal Register rules went unreported. That's hundreds to over a thousand rules a year slipping past the oversight Congress built into the process.

There is a simple solution: require agencies to document submissions clearly, side by side, in the Federal Register and Congressional Record. Read here:

The rules Congress never gets to see - Competitive Enterprise Institute The 1996 Congressional Review Act (CRA) has been used to overturn only a few dozen federal regulatory directives since its enactment, most during the two Trump administrations. Some 110,000 rules have been issued during that span. It's not a great strea...

A diabetes medication might cost a few thousand dollars a year. Dialysis, which it can help prevent, costs about $90,000 a year. CEI's Jeremy Nighohossian uses examples like this in his new National Review op-ed to explain why prescription drug prices — even when they look high — often save the healthcare system money in the long run. Read here: https://bit.ly/3TyGNKC

Prescription Drugs Save Lives at a (Mostly) Reasonable Cost - Competitive Enterprise Institute Prescription drugs are an extraordinary lifesaving and life-enhancing technology, so integrated into our daily lives that, nowadays, we perhaps take them for granted. Headlines and public policy debates focus on their cost, particularly pre-discount “li...

The 2020 No Surprises Act was meant to protect patients from unexpected medical bills — but CEI's Jeremy Nighohossian explains how it backfired.

Arbiters have consistently ruled in favor of healthcare practitioners over insurers, and since insurance companies' counteroffers don't actually affect who wins, practitioners have simply raised their bids. The result: more claims, higher out-of-network costs, and ultimately higher premiums for everyone. He lays out two market-based fixes that could actually solve the problem.

How The No Surprises Act worsened the problem of surprise bills - Competitive Enterprise Institute Next week, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) will convene a roundtable to discuss adjustments to the 2020 No Surprises Act, which has come under increased criticism for shifting costs away from patients while driving up overall costs without addressing the under...