Episode 968: CEI’s Annual Report of the Federal Regulatory State

Summary

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Newt’s World Ep. 968: CEI’s Annual Report of the Federal Regulatory State

Date: April 18, 2026
Host: Newt Gingrich
Guest: Wayne Crews, Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies, Competitive Enterprise Institute

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Episode Overview

This episode of Newt’s World features an in-depth conversation between Newt Gingrich and Wayne Crews about the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) 2026 edition of their annual report, "10,000 Commandments," which analyzes the scope, scale, and costs of federal regulation in the United States. The discussion delves into the relationship between government spending and regulation, the hidden costs of regulatory compliance, the historic shifts over recent decades, and possible reforms for the future. Wayne Crews offers both data-driven insights and philosophical perspectives on the regulatory state, with Newt Gingrich guiding the conversation towards implications for the American economy and small businesses.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Growth of Government Spending and Regulation

• Core Thesis: There is a direct correlation between increased federal spending and the rise of regulatory burdens.
• Wayne Crews describes the "administrative state" as a force that has grown dramatically and become intertwined with fiscal policy, resulting in an environment where both conventional regulations and more ambiguous agency "guidance" impose significant economic drag.

  “We had the CARES Act, the CHIPS and science law, the inflation law, all of the massive spending measures that are already hyper regulatory before the regulators even pick up the first pen.” (Wayne Crews, 10:02)

• Newt notes this shift away from America’s tradition of limited government as a “fundamental change.”

  “The amount of red tape and the amount of power that that red tape gives to the bureaucracy is a really fundamental change from the American tradition.” (Newt Gingrich, 11:21)

2. The Hidden Cost of Regulation

• Referencing data from the National Association of Manufacturers, Crews discusses a $3 trillion annual cost for regulatory compliance—costs that largely go unseen by the public.
• He explains how regulatory costs can rival or surpass tax burdens for American families, accounting for up to 30% of household budgets if higher estimates are believed.

  “If you use NAM's higher $3 trillion estimate, that's about 30% of the family's household budget that goes toward the cost, hidden cost of regulations.” (Wayne Crews, 17:43)

• Regulatory costs are described as a “hidden tax,” often exceeding even the sum of corporate income taxes.

3. Impact on Small Businesses and Local Communities

• Smaller entities struggle most, as they lack the resources to manage the regulatory burden.
• Crews adds that large corporations can sometimes tolerate or even favor heavy regulations because it stifles competition—“rent seeking.”

  “Small businesses don't have the resources to comply with regulations… large companies that like regulation—well, ‘like’ is the wrong word, but they'll support it because it allows them to shut out competitors.” (Wayne Crews, 24:39)

• The fragmentation of the small business and local government coalition, which once championed regulatory reform, has weakened any pushback against the current regulatory onslaught.

4. Historical Reforms and Shifts in Partisanship

• Gingrich and Crews reflect on the bipartisan regulatory reforms of the 1990s, such as the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act and the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

  “What was so amazing about that time compared to now is when you were Speaker and this act passed, it was extraordinarily bipartisan.” (Wayne Crews, 24:39)

• The CRA has been underutilized, with the Trump administration accounting for most of its actual impact in revoking specific regulations.

5. The 10,000 Commandments Report

• Now in its 30th year, the report aims to quantify regulatory impacts, given the lack of comprehensive transparency from government agencies.
• Crews describes how agencies have shifted to more opaque forms of regulation, such as guidance documents, leaving the public and even Congress in the dark.

6. Trump-Era and Recent Deregulation

• The Trump administration’s 1-in/10-out rule aimed at reducing federal regulation, with claimed significant economic savings—including specific, controversial savings like TSA’s decision to let passengers keep shoes on.

  “But keeping my shoes on is not deconstructing the administrative state.” (Wayne Crews, 29:37)

7. Scale and Global Context

• U.S. regulatory costs are compared to the size of major world economies.

  “If US regulations were an economy, they'd be the world's 11th largest economy, ranking right behind the Russian Federation and ahead of the Korean Republic.” (Newt Gingrich, 21:59)

• The scope of regulatory cost approaches or surpasses entire categories of federal tax collection.

8. Toward Solutions: Regulatory Budgets & the REINS Act

• Crews proposes the idea of a regulatory budget—placing a cap on overall regulatory costs imposed on the private sector and subjecting major regulations to direct Congressional approval.

  “A regulatory budget... would also be set... capping the amounts that the federal government can impose on the private sector.” (Wayne Crews, 34:28)

• He contrasts this with the current situation, where cost-benefit analysis often fails due to political biases and the inability (or unwillingness) of some policymakers to recognize costs.

9. Chevron Doctrine and Judicial Constraints

• Supreme Court changes to the Chevron deference (which allowed agencies to broadly interpret statutes) are discussed—Crews is skeptical about the long-term impact, noting that progressive policymakers find ways to maneuver around new constraints.

  “So what if Chevron says you can't go beyond what a statute says? Here you are with financial agencies doing DEI and doing climate rules and things of that sort. The left doesn't care. They're lawless in that sense and they're going to go ahead and push.” (Wayne Crews, 37:03)

10. Philosophical Mission

• Both Gingrich and Crews endorse a smaller federal government more rooted in individual liberty and competitive business.

  “Isn't it a fact that in the long run where you and I want to go is in fact a smaller government with dramatically greater freedom?” (Newt Gingrich, 40:07)
  “Exactly. That's really, really what I'm hoping for.” (Wayne Crews, 40:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Hidden Costs:

  “If you use NAM's higher $3 trillion estimate, that's about 30% of the family's household budget that goes toward the cost, hidden cost of regulations.” (Wayne Crews, 17:43)

• On the Futility of Over-Regulation:

  “All tainted meat was approved by the USDA.” (Wayne Crews, 12:40)

• Humorous But Grim Analogy:

  “I'd love a federal government that picks a national bird and apart from that, mostly leaves us alone.” (Wayne Crews, 11:35)

• On Guidance vs. Rules:

  "They tend to govern with guidance, documents and so forth that I think are really, really important for us to address in the next stage of reforms..." (Wayne Crews, 10:48)

• On the Purpose of the CEI Report:

  “You can look up the historical tables of the budget and see exactly what the federal government's doing, but that's not the case with regulations. So that's why I do this report like ‘10,000 Commandments.’” (Wayne Crews, 13:32)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Artemis 2 news: 02:39 - 06:23
• Introducing Wayne Crews & CEI report theme: 09:30 - 10:02
• Correlation of regulation and spending: 10:02 - 11:21
• Red tape and bureaucracy power: 11:21 - 12:00
• Overview of regulatory burdens: 12:00 - 14:01
• Origins of ‘10,000 Commandments’ report: 14:01 - 16:12
• True costs of regulation: 16:12 - 18:42
• World’s 11th largest “regulatory economy” analogy: 21:59 - 24:22
• Impact on small business and the loss of old coalitions: 24:22 - 29:17
• Deregulation savings and TSA/shoes policy: 29:17 - 31:35
• Regulatory budget & reform concepts: 34:22 - 36:58
• Chevron decision and regulatory workarounds: 37:03 - 40:07
• Vision for a freer America and closing remarks: 40:07 - 42:04

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Conclusion & Takeaways

The conversation emphasizes that regulation is not invisible—its effects are deeply felt, especially by households and small businesses. The cost, both in dollars and in competitiveness, is “hidden” but massive. The 10,000 Commandments report exists to bring that hidden tax into the light and foster meaningful reform, potentially including a “regulatory budget” or stronger Congressional oversight. Both guest and host close on a note that, while change is difficult, cycles do turn, and renewed energy for regulatory reform may be on the horizon.

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Find the 2026 “10,000 Commandments” report at cei.org.

Transcript

[Wayne Crews]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Newt Gingrich]

Welcome to Newts World podcast on the iHeart podcast network Artemis 2, which was the flight from April 1 to April 11 this year was truly historic. But I have to admit when I first learned they were going to launch on April 1st. I was afraid people were going to think it was an April Fool's joke, but it sure wasn't a joke. This is the largest rocket ever launched. Called the Space Launch System. It is the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft. Three Americans and a Canadian went further out into space than anybody had ever done before. In fact, over the course of the nine days, one hour, the 32 minutes and 15 seconds, they traveled 700,237 miles. The crew included pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, and Commander Reid Weissman. This is a very important historic moment. For the first time since 1970, two Americans were back around the moon. We actually went further into space than ever before. In fact, the folks on Artemis 2 went 252,756 miles from Earth, which was about 4,000 miles more than Apollo 13's original record. I think it's extraordinary. Glover is the first person of color, Koch was the first woman, Wiseman was the oldest, and Hansen was the first non American to orbit the moon. So they are historic figures now and they have played a real role in taking freedom into space. And I think that's the real meaning of Artemis, too. President Trump had said very clearly in his first term that he wanted America to lead Freedom back into the solar system and have America be the leading space power in the world. We have achieved it. It's a great thing. And in the middle of all the noise, all the other things going on, all the clutter, it's useful to take a moment out, look to the skies and realize that America's back. I think we're never going to leave again. I think we'll now start organizing the moon. And from the moon, we will launch to Mars. And over the next 10 years, you will see a dramatic increase in the number of humans in space. And they will overwhelmingly be free people. In fact, they'll overwhelmingly be American. Behind the space launch system, which as of today is the largest spaceship ever launched, comes the Starship by elon Musk and SpaceX. The Starship will be the biggest, most powerful rocket ever built. They have now had five test runs. When it is perfected, it will lift a hundred tons or a hundred people into orbit. It will be reusable, and it will be the beginning of the great age of freedom. Going into the solar system, I think it's a very exciting time. And despite all the noise, all the problems, all the challenges, I think Artemis II is a sign that the future could be amazing. Now, coming up, I'M going to talk with Wayne Cruz about the Competitive Enterprise Institute's annual report entitled 10,000 Commandments 2026, which is about our record federal spending and regulatory burdens. You're going to find Wayne fascinating. That's next.

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[NFL Schedule Announcer]

wait is almost over. Get ready for the NFL season with a highly anticipated 2026 NFL schedule release. Every rivalry, every rematch and every rookie debut with matchups locked and kickoffs confirmed. Be there for every can't miss moment. The full NFL Schedule release coming in May. Get all the [e-mail] ScheduleRelease.

[Wayne Crews]

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[Wayne Crews]

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[Newt Gingrich]

I'm really pleased to welcome my guest Wayne Cruz. He is the Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute on their annual snapshot of the Federal regulatory state. Wayne, welcome and thank you for joining me on Newts World.

[Wayne Crews]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Newt Gingrich]

Wayne, you make this interesting point that when government spending goes up, regulation tends to rise with it. What's the connection there? Why do those two things seem to move together?

[Wayne Crews]

That's absolutely the case. I think we've had an administrative state now for over 100 years and some of the biggest reforms of that actually happened when you were in charge and enacted some of the key regulatory reform measures that I hope we can get to. But I'll tell you, the big problem that's occurred lately is even though There are over 3,000 rules and regulations that are pumping out of the federal agencies like chocolate bunnies, Trump has dropped those significantly. But we are now in a post Covid era. We had the CARES act, the CHIPS and science law, the inflation law, all of the massive spending measures that are already hyper regulatory before the regulators even pick up the first pin. So when we're talking about a federal budget, you CBO just put out its new data and the federal budget now is $7 trillion. In a non crisis era, we're not in Covid or the financial meltdown or 9 11. So we've got this huge spending state that is also regulatory at the same time. And one of the things that's a big concern is not just these conventional rules and regulations that are pouring out, but agencies now are tending to govern with guidance, documents and so forth that I think are really, really important for us to address in the next stage of reforms that' burst on that.

[Newt Gingrich]

The amount of red tape and the amount of power that that red tape gives to the bureaucracy is a really fundamental change from the American tradition.

[Wayne Crews]

Absolutely it is. I'd love a federal government that picks a national bird and apart from that, mostly leaves us alone. We've come a long way from a limited government so situation. I ran across your vhs, your Renewing American Civilization VHS the other day when we were downstate for Easter. And I've got those men conditioned for the kids. But government is a certain thing. It's a force wielding institution. It's good at certain things, but it's not good at picking winners and losers in markets. It's not good at setting prices, it's not good at energy conservation, it's not necessarily good at financial regulation. So the important thing to do, I think for conservatives or small l libertarian types, when we say we don't want this regulation, it doesn't mean no regulation. No regulation is never your choice. Your choice is always going to be between political disciplines and competitive disciplines. And I tend to think that when we revisit the regulatory state, we tried to do the REINS act and some other reforms last year, but if we can revisit the regulatory state, we've got to make the point that just because you don't have a government agency involved doesn't mean you don't get regulation. Because think about it this way. A private company has got upstream business suppliers, downstream business customers, consumers, Wall street, the media, all sorts of forces are arrayed against companies that misbehave. But when you replace that with just baseline regulation, you're not helping the economy necessarily, but you're not even necessarily helping health and safety. I always joke that, you know, all tainted meat was approved by the usda. So when we say that we don't want regulation or we don't want overregulation, it doesn't mean you, you don't have regulation because in a free enterprise system you absolutely do. And with some of those reforms that were done in the 90s that we're trying to re up now, like small business regulatory relief, unfunded mandates relief, beefing up Congressional Review act and things like that, it's time to take into account that we're pumping out all of these rules and regulations in energy, environment, labor and so forth. And we're not necessarily protecting the public. So that's sort of the purpose of this report. I'd mentioned the 7 trillion CBO budget, but the thing is you can look up the historical tables of the budget and see exactly what the federal government's doing, but that's not the case with regulations. So that's why I do this report like 10,000 commandments and this is the 30th anniversary edition. So I tell all my colleagues they're getting old.

[Newt Gingrich]

That's wild. What first got you to do this?

[Wayne Crews]

Well, I was studying economics at George Mason University. I've been to William and Mary to do an mba, and I wanted to work in banking or finance or something like that. And I got on these mailing lists of these Institute for Humane Studies, Cato Institute, these libertarian organizations, and I got intrigued. I went to some of their summer seminars and I saw these professors where I was interested in business, but I saw these professors not just interested in the business, but they were defending the entire system that makes business and wealth and prosperity possible. So it fascinated me. And I came to George Mason to study economics, had the opportunity to study under James Buchanan, who got the Nobel Prize. I got to about the master's degree level, dropped out and bought a house, got married. I went to work on the Hill. I worked for Senator Phil Graham back when he said, this Hillary care is going to pass over my cold, dead political body. I had a great time working on the Hill. But just before I did that, I went to another free market organization working on kind of free market environmentalism. But think about it more as private conservation, like environmental amenities, need to be brought into the market, into the voluntary sector too, in order for them to be preserved. That's another area where regulation backfires. So I got interested in that and in my work, in my studies in public choice. We were looking at the, you know, the effect of the legislature on the growth of government, the effect of judiciary on the growth of government. And I got interested in agencies and their effect on the growth of government. And so that's why I started tracking cost of regulations, where we could get rules and Federal Register pages, all those sorts of doodads, and put together the first 10,000 commandments report. And it's been kind of a fixture ever since. And it gets traction. It used to be in the early days when there actually was some bipartisanship, we would even see stories about 10,000 commandments in the Washington Post business section. But now things are extremely, extremely polarizing. It's very, very difficult to talk regulatory reform. And we saw that in the past year. But I hope that with a report like this and with always trying to underscore the scope and scale of regulation, that we can get some traction and get some new reforms that beef up what you all did back in the late 1990s.

[Newt Gingrich]

I saw that in October of 2023, the National association of Manufacturers suggested that regulatory compliance costs $3 trillion a year. That's just compliance.

[Wayne Crews]

That's right.

[Newt Gingrich]

That's a hidden cost of government.

[Wayne Crews]

Exactly. I think the costs are actually probably even more. And you might have noticed in those little bullet points at the front. I use a placeholder for the cost of regulation of 2.153 trillion. That's what I have right now. And I've kept it at that level. And the reason is partly because of you and what your colleagues did. You all did the Regulatory Right to Know act, which required OMB to perform these cost and benefit estimates of regulation. I shouldn't even be writing this report. But what's happened is OMB is supposed to do these annual cost benefit reports, but not just the annual report. They're supposed to do an aggregate estimate. And back in those early days, they did that aggregate estimate. But the left quickly latched on public citizens and all jumped on them. And so the OMB and the Small Business Administration backed off ever saying anything else about regulatory costs. So what I've been trying to do in 10,000 commandments is preserve that core that the Regulatory Right to Know act came up with and then get new reforms to boost it and reinforce it. Because what's happened is the aggregate estimate for regulatory costs disappeared. They replaced it with a 10 year estimate for regulatory costs. Now that's disappeared. And so we're left with this. I say a 2 trillion burden, largely based on government numbers. NAM has come out with an estimate looking at employment cost, environmental cost, energy costs and so forth, financial regulations, and that 3 trillion. Put it this way, if you want to look at it, as far as the household is concerned, under my 2 trillion placeholder, that's about 20% of the family's expense budget that goes toward hidden cost of regulation. If you use NAM's higher 3 trillion estimate, that's about 30% of the family's household budget that goes toward the cost, hidden cost of regulations. And Even in my 2 trillion figure, that breaks out to about 15,000 per household, actually closer to 16,000. That exceeds every single item in the household budget except for housing. It's more than transportation, clothing, education, savings, all those sorts of things. So it's a huge amount, but because it's hidden, I guess they find it easier to get away with. And so that's what we're trying to do something about. We're trying to make these things much more above board.

[Newt Gingrich]

When we come back, we talk about how rules and regulations have changed over the years and how Trump's deregulation has reduced them.

[Public Investing Platform Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures the

[NFL Schedule Announcer]

wait is almost over. Get ready for the NFL season with the highly anticipated 2026 NFL schedule release. Every rivalry, every rematch and every rookie debut with matchups locked and kickoffs confirmed. Be there for every can't miss moment. The full NFL Schedule release coming in May. Get all the [e-mail] ScheduleRelease.

[Wayne Crews]

Amazon Health AI Presents Painful Thoughts why

[Commercial/Advertisement Voice (e.g., Cindy Crawford, Sophia Donner)]

did I search the Internet for answers to my cold sore problem? Now I'm stuck down a rabbit hole filled with images of alarmingly graphic source in various stages of ooze. I can clear my search history, but I can never unsee that.

[Wayne Crews]

Don't go down the rabbit hole. Amazon Health AI gets you the right care fast. Healthcare just got less painful.

[Commercial/Advertisement Voice (e.g., Cindy Crawford, Sophia Donner)]

Now I'd like to introduce you to Meaningful Beauty, the famed skincare brand created by iconic supermodel Cindy Crawford. It's her secret to absolutely gorgeous skin. Meaningful Beauty makes powerful and effective skin care simple and it's loved by millions of women. It's formulated for all ages and all skin tones and types and it's designed to work as a complete skin care system, leaving your skin feeling soft, smooth and nourished. I recommend starting with Cindy's full regimen which contains all five of her best selling products including the amazing Youth Activating Melon Serum. This next generation serum serum has the power of melon leaf stem cell technology. It's melon leaf stem cells encapsulated for freshness and released onto the skin to support a visible reduction in the appearance of wrinkles. With thousands of glowing five star reviews, why not give it a try? Subscribe today and you can get the amazing Meaningful Beauty system for just 49.95. That includes our introductory five piece system, free gifts, free shipping and a 60 day money back guarantee. All of that available@meaningful beauty.com.

[Newt Gingrich]

You make this great analogy that if US regulations were an economy, they'd be the world's 11th largest economy, ranking right behind the Russian Federation and ahead of the Korean Republic. To think that that's all regulatory cost. That's not tax cost, that's regulatory costs.

[Wayne Crews]

That's right. You think of taxation, you're looking at 7 trillion a year of government outlays. The individual income taxes that are collected are about 2.4 trillion. So if you look at it that way, my regulatory cost figure is just under the amount of the entire individual tax burden that you're talking about. So when you talk about regulations, what they really are is a hidden tax. We've got the 2.4 trillion taxes that individual tax filers in the country pay. But the regulatory cost then or 2 trillion on top of that if you go with a NAM figure. Of course the figures are even more startling. But corporate income taxes for example are only around 500 billion. Regulatory costs are four times the amount of corporate income taxes, which is incredible. And corporate pre tax profits around 4 trillion regulatory costs, you know, close to half that. You're right. It's a tremendous amount of resources that get diverted. And as I say, I think, I think that the figures that we often use are understated. I mean there is another estimate apart from the national association of Manufacturers, one that says if we had stopped regulating back in 1980 and frozen things that the GDP would be $4 trillion a year larger than it is right now. And that study came out several years ago. So there's no good real way to get a hold of it. That's why we call it a hidden tax. And in a certain sense, if you believe the free market economists, the Austrians and so forth, I can't control the economy, I don't know others internal costs. So you can't actually measure the cost of regulation as such. I mean this is a great discussion we had when I testified in the House Budget Committee on this problem. And incidentally that's one of the important things. The House Budget Committee is increasingly taking more of an interest in regulatory costs. So I think that's very, very important to think about for the future. When we start getting budget resolutions and we start getting blueprints put out from House Budget Committee and Republican Study Committee and others, that they don't just look at that spending budget, but also look at the hidden cost of regulations. And that's what we're pushing for quite a bit.

[Newt Gingrich]

Aren't small businesses and small communities, like counties, cities, small school boards, aren't they the most impacted because they have the least ability to offload and staff just meeting all the regulatory requirements?

[Wayne Crews]

Absolutely. And I'm glad you brought this up because it's an excuse for me to jump back on the Small Business Reg Reform act that you all did. But it's very, very well known that small businesses don't have the resources to comply with regulations. And there's this notion in economics of rent seeking that you may even have large companies that like regulation. Well, like is the wrong word, but they'll support it because it allows them to shut out competitors, raise their prices, and they're better off making peace with the regulatory state. I think there's a lot of concerns about that in the current debate with respect to artificial intelligence, for example, where you're seeing this fusion of business and government that ought not exist. But in dealing with the small business, the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness act, that was done in 1996. What was so amazing about that time compared to now is when you were speaker and this act passed, it was extraordinarily bipartisan. The unfunded mandates, like 100 to 0. Small business regulatory relief back then in The Senate was 90 to 0. Even the contentious part that is thought about so much now, the Congressional Review act back then, Congressional Review act just briefly lets Congress just basically veto a regulation and the President acknowledges the resolution of the disapproval. But back then in the late 90s, you even had Harry Reid and Dale Bumpers getting up on their hind legs in the House and Senate talking about the need for Congress to take back control of the regulatory state and get it out of the hands of these unaccountable regulators. So you have the CRA back then, overwhelmingly bipartisan. Unfortunately, you know, it was barely used after the CRA passed. You know, we had a repetitive motion rule overturned in the Bush administration. And here we are today in 2026. Since the CRA passed, there have been over 110,000 rules and regulations. Only 42 have been overturned by a CRA resolution of disapproval. Guess what, 22 of those 42 were from Trump last year. Most of the others before that were also from Trump. So it barely got used until we hit the Trump administration. And so it's interesting to see see it finally get used. But as you can tell, and as I've mentioned about the fusion of spending and regulation, it is the case that we'll have to do something about not just the rules and regulations that get printed and published in the Federal Register, but also the regulatory dark matter and kind of Trump's got a lot of swampy impulses of his own, tariff issues and things like that, and AI and of course, partial nationalizations of intel and so forth. And a lot of those things don't show up in the Federal Register. But. But the effects of small business are very, very rough. And unfortunately, you said, why do we talk about business and government and spending and regulation kind of in the same breath. Businesses were in Washington in the late 90s, aligned with governors and mayors. Everybody was in Washington raising hell about unfunded mandates. But now when the federal government is spending more than 7 trillion, all of the mandates are funded. The left was very, very smart in this way. They broke apart that free market coalition or that free market ish coalition between small businesses and mayors and governors. When Biden was in power, you had the mayors getting together and all they were talking about is how they could allocate the Inflation Reduction act money and so forth. And so all of these huge gargantuan spending bills that already have strings attached that are regulatory. And under Biden, it was DEI and climate and care economy and so on down the line, all of that stuff, if there's a change in power, all of that stuff is coming right back. And you don't have the same small business alliance to fight it like we did back in the late 90s when we initially got this passed. That's what concerns me the most. It's just that government is spending so much and so many lower level governments too, are in the tank with the federal government too, that we've kind of shattered federalism in that sense. And everything is fused with a gargantuan federal sector. And we've got too much impulses to merge public and private that way too, when it comes to businesses. So that's the concern I have. And we raised that in the new 10,000 commandments. We talked about the fact that the Coalition for regulatory reform has been weakened by all of this government spending. So where do we go from here? I mean, we've got some ideas, but that's the difference in the situation now compared to the late 90s when we actually got this huge slate, I mean, it's been completely unprecedented. Never repeated that regulatory reform change that happened.

[Newt Gingrich]

One thing I noticed was that apparently the analysis claims that the Transportation Security Administration decision to allow passengers to keep their shoes on is a $25 billion savings.

[Wayne Crews]

You remember what I said a few minutes ago that nobody really knows how to calculate the cost of reg. And that's one of the reasons you would have some of the free market groups say, you know what, we have to have Congress vote to approve regulations. That's the only way to internalize these costs so that Congress has to be answerable to the voters. So yeah, that's true. What that nugget comes from is late last year, the unified agenda for regulations is always late. It's supposed to come out in the spring and fall and tell what the agency's priorities are. And we got a spring one last year. We never got the fall unified agenda with all the agency priorities. Instead we got something that was good but not a replacement. We got Trump's update on the progress of his 1 in 10 out program. And what Trump and the administration, the White House claimed is that There were only five significant regulatory actions, but there were 636 that were deregulatory. Now you can't find all those things. 636 is a lot of it's the regulatory dark matter and guidance documents and so forth that I was talking about. So they ended up with a ratio claimed of 112 out to 1. And I would expect, and maybe we can talk about it again in the near future. I would expect there's going to be a brand new report soon from the administration with an Update on the 1 in 10 out project. And especially they're going to have to do it before America 250 because people have forgotten that Doge was actually supposed to do a report for America 250. And I think people forgotten that and I hope that we see it. But the Trump administration said 1 in 112 out. But of those rules out, three of them account for like 70 or 80% of the savings. Right. One of them was a big one. It related to private companies having to disclose information about their officers things so that good small business reform, like we were just talking about all that claim savings from leaving your shoes on when you go to the airport. I thought, oh well, okay, I'll include it in the report. But. But keeping my shoes on is not deconstructing the administrative state.

[Newt Gingrich]

Coming up, how should we fix the system? And what should Congress do.

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[NFL Schedule Announcer]

wait is almost over. Get ready for the NFL season with the highly anticipated 20202026 NFL Schedule release. Every rivalry, every rematch and every rookie debut with matchups locked and kickoffs confirmed. Be there for every can't miss moment. The full NFL Schedule release coming in May. Get all the [e-mail] ScheduleRelease.

[Wayne Crews]

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[Wayne Crews]

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[Newt Gingrich]

You've proposed something called a regulatory budget. I mean, how would that work in the real world?

[Wayne Crews]

Well, one thing I don't want is a Regulatory budget that reflects what we have had in the past under sort of progressive views of regulatory control known as cost benefit analysis. I prefer cost analysis. Benefits are what Congress had in mind when it enacted the law in the first place. So it presumably knows lives saved, economic benefits and things like that. But a regulatory budget is simply a way of capping the compliance cost as you were talking about with NAM and the 3 trillion compliance costs that they come up with. But a regulatory budget, in the same way that a fiscal budget is set in Congress, a regulatory budget would also be set. Often you'll hear about a regulatory budget but what they're really talking about is just capping agencies own spending. But a regulatory compliance budget is involved in talking about capping the amounts that the federal government can impose on the private sector. So that is one of the gauges of control. While I support it, I think you've got to be really, really careful because the left, left is very, very good at denying the costs of regulations. If the left thinks that government control is the way to go, say in net zero projects, carbon captures and things like that, if they think government could control things altogether, schooling, hospitals, if they want single payer health care, it's impossible for the left to ever see an incremental move toward that as a cost. So that's a little bit of the jam we're in now because the philosophies are so different now between left and right than what they were in the late 90s that the left is unwilling to acknowledge cost as such of any government intervention. And that's everything from Mamdami's government grocery stores all the way up to single payer health care. They are unable or incapable and unwilling to recognize regulatory costs. So that's the jam we are in with the regulatory budget. You partly get around that by what's called the REINS act regulations from the executive in need of scrutiny. Anytime there's a fat major rule, it couldn't go into effect until Congress approved it. If that happened, I wouldn't need to worry about a regulatory budget at all. It's not going to solve everything because we have a fiscal budget, but we also have a $40 trillion debt. So I'm not saying that Congress voting on it is necessarily the answer you get where I'm coming from. But. But it's kind of one of the necessary but not sufficient conditions.

[Newt Gingrich]

Can you explain how the Chevron decision fits into all this?

[Wayne Crews]

There's this notion that agencies, as long as they were using just cause and not being over the top, that they could interpret statutes in such a way to achieve their goals and not violate statutes, but they tended to go well beyond what the statute would allow. And the Supreme Court knocked that down. The Supreme Court knocked down the notion that gave agencies all of that freedom. And they also reinforced this notion of when there are major economic questions that Congress has to decide, not the agencies decide. So there's no doubt that recent Supreme Court decisions like that have put a damper, have put some restraint on what agencies can do. But I stress again that progressives, they're always a couple of steps ahead when it comes to things like this. Because if Chevron prevents agencies from going beyond what a statute says, how much of a barrier is that in a world that's post cares act, post inflation law, post infrastructure law, post chips and science law, post TikTok ban, all the left does is then readjusts and it tweaks things at the legislative level and opens the way for what Chevron might stop at the agency level. And also the other way they can work around it is some of the biggest rules of all, like the waters of the United States back under Obama, came through as a guidance document. So that's one way that agencies work around the Chevron doctrine. You know, in the overturning of that now they issue guidance documents, even the joint employer rule, the franchising rule that came out under Obama, those were administrators interpretations coming out of the Department of Labor. There weren't even rules that even had so much as the courtesy of notice and comment. So the issue guidance documents. And they've done the same thing with diversity and equity measures. When Biden first came in after the first Trump administration, first thing he did was wiped out all of Trump's deregulatory measures. And he built up, he called it whole of government. That's why sometimes when I hear Trump's cabinet use the term whole of government, I say, no, don't use that term. Because Biden was using whole of government measures on equity, on climate, on net zero, on the care economy. So he, he would have even the financial agencies enforcing climate regulations in terms of what they do. So you see the significance of that. So what if Chevron says you can't go beyond what a statute says? Here you are with financial agencies doing DEI and doing climate rules and things of that sort. The left doesn't care. They're lawless in that sense and they're going to go ahead and push. And generally they tend to get a lot of these things upheld. They were very clever that way by baking in these whole of government measures, you could wipe out the EPA's programs, but then they would just be picked up at the Energy Department over the Department of Agriculture or Interior Department. So the whole of government notion was very clever. And the Chevron decision change hasn't been enough to roll back progressive advances. They've had 100 years, they've gotten very good. The scale of enterprises of free enterprise, voluntary sector has gone down a lot. Our founder Fred Smith would always say the Constitution isn't perfect, but it's better than what we have now. We've got to get back to that. In some sense.

[Newt Gingrich]

That's actually a great line. I mean, isn't it a fact that in the long run where you and I want to go is in fact a smaller government with dramatically greater freedom?

[Wayne Crews]

Exactly. That's really, really what I'm hoping for. And I think part of our message and some audiences, even on the left, and I think especially college students, students are receptive to it. It's just because you think up a regulation, the left is very brilliant at thinking up a value and then naming an agency after it. But just because you think up a regulation doesn't mean you're actually helping the economy or helping the public. You may be undermining those disciplinary measures that go along with new advances. I mean, that's the wonder of free enterprise. It doesn't just create new products and services, but properly in a rule of law system. It also evolves alongside the disciplinary measures that go along with it. Risk management, warranties, professional standards. And government can come along like it potentially can do with these artificial intelligence blueprints they all call them, with the tech executives all lined up in the Oval Office and they come up with these ways. Government regulation often tends to indemnify bad behavior, not prevent it. And so part of it is making that distinction that we're not talking about, you know, laissez faire doesn't mean everybody gets to go out and poison baby food bottles. It means actually that you get more protection than you have now, plus a lot more wealth. And that's the goal.

[Newt Gingrich]

I think that's tremendous. I think it's amazing that you've dedicated so much of your time and so much of your life to this. I want to thank you for joining me. Our listeners can find the 2026 [e-mail] and I want to encourage you just hang in there and keep pitching because I think we will come around to another cycle of very dramatic reform. And your work will be a significant part of how we do that.

[Wayne Crews]

Been an absolute delight. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you so much. Thinking of cei. Thank you for having us.

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Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stock, stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures the

[NFL Schedule Announcer]

wait is almost over. Get ready for the NFL season with the highly anticipated 2026 NFL schedule release. Every rivalry, every rematch and every rookie debut with matchups locked and kickoffs confirmed. Be there for every can't miss moment. The full NFL Schedule release coming in May. Get all the details. [e-mail] schedulerelease.

[Wayne Crews]

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[Newt Gingrich]

And now I'm pleased and introduce a new segment to Newt's World where I answer listeners questions. To ask a question please email me at newtgingrich360.com Robert S. Asks should the independence of the Federal Reserve be preserved without political interference? President Trump has vowed to fire Jerome H. Powell, who's the chairman, if he opted to stay on at the Federal Reserve after his term as chair ends, doubling down on a criminal investigation into the central bank that is threatening to delay the confirmation of Mr. Powell's successor. Mr. Powell's tenure as chair officially ends on May 15, but both the law and past precedent suggest that he can serve on a temporary basis until Mr. Trump's pick to replace him, Kevin M. Warsh, is confirmed by the Senate. Mr. Powell's term as a federal governor also runs well beyond that date, allowing him to stay on at the central bank until 2028. The process to confirm Mr. Wash has been complicated by the Justice Department's investigation into Mr. Powell and his handling of costly, I mean, costly renovations at the FUD headquarters in Washington. Mr. Trump said in a business interview that the investigation was not just about the $2.5 billion project, but also about Mr. Powell's incompetence. I think that Jerome Powell is a pain in the neck. I don't agree with him philosophically, but I think he's about to leave and I think it's better off to let him leave. I do think that the reconstruction of the Federal Reserve is an absurdity, but I think that's for Congress to investigate and I'm frankly very uncomfortable to have the president picking personal fights. The presidency is so big and it is so powerful that it's very dangerous to go after individuals, and I would just let Powell retire and gradually leave the scene. That's how I would approach it. Well, he's so I'll just stay on as long as his term is there. That's why he had a term that runs for two more years. I don't see that as a crisis for the country. The president can try to get him out, but I think people are very uncomfortable with the degree to which politics has become a blood sport and the government, whether it's the Biden administration or the Trump administration, threatening to put people in jail and using the Justice Department to go after individuals I think is very dangerous for the future of the country. I look forward to hearing from you. To ask a question, please email me at newtingrich360.com thank you to my guest, Wayne Cruz. New Towor World is produced by Gingrich 360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnzi Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team at Gingrich360. If you've been enjoying Newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Join me on [e-mail] I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newts World.

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[Wayne Crews]

Watch only on Prime.

[NFL Schedule Announcer]

The wait is almost over. Get ready for the NFL season with a highly anticipated 2026 NFL schedule release. Every rivalry, every rematch and every rookie debut with matchups locked and kickoffs confirmed. Be there for every can't miss moment. The full NFL Schedule release coming in May. Get all the [e-mail] ScheduleRelease.

[Wayne Crews]

Long shifts, full days.

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[Wayne Crews]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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