Feds Using Blog Posts, Informal Docs To Skirt Regulatory Process

The Daily Caller reports:

Federal agencies are increasingly using informal guidance documents, memoranda and blog posts to create rules and skirt the formal regulatory process, and Congress must stop them, a new Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) white paper finds.

The federal government has no complete survey on the use of what CEI calls “regulatory dark matter.” The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) only reviewed 14 out of “thousands” of documents created by federal officials in 2014, CEI said.

But agencies are increasingly using these informal documents to create official regulations with consequences, like recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidance claiming landlords and home sellers who don’t rent or sell to convicted criminals are violating the Fair Housing Act.

These guidance documents are “purportedly not legally binding,” but they still “cajole and intimidate” people and businesses into complying with the agency, CEI said. Most new rules never reach the attention of the media or Congress.

The Obama regime makes its' own law.