From: National Review
By Wayne Crews & Ryan Young
Even faced with a Democratic House, he can make agencies quantify and justify their regulations.
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Dark matter can take the form of guidance documents, memoranda, notices, circulars, or even press releases indicating a policy change, such as Labor Department designation of independent contractors. Guidance is not supposed to be legally binding on citizens, or even the issuing agency, yet as the Administrative Conference of the United States has detailed, those who are regulated by agencies have reason to feel obliged to comply with the policy content of such pronouncements.
There is a serious lack of transparency and accountability for guidance. The amount of guidance is unknown and defies official attempts to inventory it all. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently attempted to confront the guidance issue — ironically, by issuing a guidance document. The directive reinforces existing requirements for agencies to report and submit both rules and guidance to Congress and the Government Accountability Office for potential disapproval, as required under the Congressional Review Act — a requirement that some agencies have been ignoring.
