Pioneer Institute Offers Blueprint for Federal Administrative Reform

Proposed changes to rulemaking and grantmaking will boost accountability and state policy innovation

BOSTON – Pioneer Institute has released a new booklet outlining detailed, actionable reforms aimed at realigning federal government agencies with the Constitution. These recommendations seek to enhance responsiveness, put accountability back into citizens’ hands, and reinforce structural safeguards to protect individual liberty.

“We must improve administrative processes by grounding them in the principles of American constitutional government,” said Emmett McGroarty, JD, who co-authored Restoring the Republic: A Blueprint for Constitutional Administration with Charles Keckler, JD, PhD and Adam Millsap, PhD.

In his foreword, Adam White of the American Enterprise Institute and the Antonin Scalia Law School wrote:

It is good to find discrete ways to improve the administrative process. It is better to root those proposals in a deeper understanding of American constitutional government and to build a framework for reform that brings out the best in each of our governing institutions. To that end, this report by Pioneer Institute is a genuinely impressive achievement.

The guide divides proposed reforms into four categories:

• Restoring the presidential management authority
• Restoring separation of powers with a particular focus on restoring power to Congress
• Making the division of state and federal power more meaningful by instituting safeguards for states
• Mitigating the threats to individual liberty that are posed by expansion of the administrative state

Notably, the authors also call for 17 executive orders to be issued in the first 100 days.  They include ensuring that all regulatory agencies and commissions participate in the regulatory review process and accommodate the president’s constitutional duty to take care that laws be faithfully executed by requiring such agencies to report to the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Another recommended executive order would require adherence to the Appointments Clause of the Constitution in the rulemaking process by requiring that officials with rulemaking power be confirmed by the Senate.

To restore separation of powers, the authors recommend incorporating the Major Questions Doctrine, which addresses the problem of agencies asserting more power than Congress has granted them, into the regulatory review process.

Congress should establish a Congressional Regulation Office to enhance the legislative branch’s analytical decision-making capabilities rather than relying on the agencies it oversees.

Congress should also repeal legal privateering provisions that invest enforcement powers in private parties by empowering them to sue other private parties for alleged statutory or regulatory violations.

“The goal is to return decision-making power to entities that are more directly accountable to the people,” said Charles Keckler.

To limit federal interference with the states, the authors recommend also applying Major Questions Doctrine Screening to federal grants to states.  This would require the federal government to specify the amount of federal contribution in relation to the state obligations arising from the assistance.

The legislative agenda should also restore state control once federal assistance is received by sending the funding in the form of block grants.

“It is important that states provide leadership and are empowered to be laboratories of democracy, as Justice Louis Brandeis described,” said Adam Millsap.

“Pioneer is grateful to the work of this exemplary group of scholars, who spent well over a year analyzing and meticulously detailing ways to reform the federal Leviathan,” said Pioneer Executive Director Jim Stergios.  “The institute regularly sees the myriad ways federal strings inhibit the ability of states to test out new policy reforms. We need the federal government to be more accountable and the states empowered to bring government practices into the 21st century.”

The study group included analysts from state and national think tanks, academia and individuals with experience in the legislative and executive branches of government.

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