Posted on 05/08/2017 9:27:37 AM PDT by b4its2late
President Trump and his team have touted their extensive use of the Congressional Review Act to roll back Obama-era regulations as a major accomplishment of the president's first 100 days in office. But their window for using this legislative tool is set to close, and Republicans must find new ways to erase rules put in place by Trump's predecessor.
The Congressional Review Act gives lawmakers 60 legislative days to undo regulations enacted by the executive branch. Congress had used the obscure law just once before Trump's tenure. Lawmakers succeeded in putting 13 bills on Trump's desk to overrule Obama administration rules this year.
"I think they were all significant," Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Penn., told the Washington Examiner of the regulations undone by Republicans this year.
"Some of these were done in the 12th hour as the previous previous administration was leaving," Thompson said. "I think that's bad form no matter what the party is."
The Congressional Review Act resolutions tackled Obama-era rules on the environment, education and labor, among other issues. Then-President Barack Obama implemented those rules in the latter half of 2016.
But Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, noted the Congressional Review Act's clock starts once the federal agency enforcing the rule submits its report on that regulation to Congress, not necessarily when the regulation is approved.
"The time period that Congress has to start the whole process going doesn't begin until an agency submits a report to Congress with the rule," Larkin said. "If they had adopted a rule and didn't send it to Congress, it's supposed to be invalid."
The nonpartisan Cause of Action Institute has identified hundreds of rules that agencies never properly submitted to Congress; those rules could be vulnerable to repeal under the Congressional Review Act.
The administration has acknowledged, however, that its best opportunity to pursue deregulation quickly has come and gone now that Obama-era rules are mostly beyond the reach of the Congressional Review Act.
Still, there are ways Congress can help Trump gut rules he sees as burdensome to the economy or local communities.
Thompson said Congress can lessen the impact of regulations during the appropriations process, when lawmakers can introduce language that directs funds away from an issue or find other ways to circumvent it. The Pennsylvania Republican pointed to a provision in the omnibus spending bill Republicans passed last week that would grant schools exemptions to rules limiting what foods they can serve to students in cafeterias.
One such rule, Thompson noted, was a requirement that all milk sold in schools be fat-free.
"Certainly, what happened was kids were not consuming milk," Thompson said, adding that the regulation effectively banned flavored milk from the lunch line.
Larkin said there are several ways Republicans on Capitol Hill and the administration can continue stripping away regulations.
"Beyond the CRA, you have what you would think of as the standard option. They can repeal or revise statutes," Larkin said. "That's one scenario: where Congress and the president work together to repeal a statute."
Another, Larkin noted, was to attack regulations during the appropriations process.
"A third one is for the president to direct the agency to reconsider the rules," Larkin said.
He cited as an example Trump's decision to review the Waters of the United States rule, an Obama regulation that allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to extend its authority over small bodies of water, including streams and wetlands.
In February, Trump directed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to examine the rule in what would be the first step toward removing it altogether. Critics of the Clean Water Act interpretation argued it could give the federal government too much power over bodies of water as small and inconsequential as puddles.
Trump has focused heavily on deregulation during the first few months of his presidency. One of his first executive actions required his administration to repeal two old regulations for every new one it enacted.
The regulatory process can be long and complicated, requiring months or even years of review, revision and responding to potential court challenges. Trump's deregulation push is about to face new challenges of its own.
WRONG!
There is a reporting requirement before this 60 day clock begins.
MOST of Bambi’s XO’s have not met this reporting requirement, so that clock has not started.
Congress has always passed legislation that modified previous legislation that had been signed into law.
Who knew?
Yet still more flake news.
FTA:
“...But Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, noted the Congressional Review Act’s clock starts once the federal agency enforcing the rule submits its report on that regulation to Congress, not necessarily when the regulation is approved. ...”
Some of em can be trashed right now, if they didn’t get the report submitted on that particular rule.
Nonsense. Exec orders can do this quickly and efficiently, as we have seen in the past.
They just want you to think it’s hard.
Congress needs to get off its dead ass and through legislation fix the bureaucratic law making fascism.
The “Congressional Review Act” itself can be changed by legislation. One change can end any time window within which Congress must act. It should be free to act any time to repeal any executive regulatory dictate, no matter how long ago the regulators entered the regulation into the Federal Register.
Why should there be no deadline for using the Congressional Review act to undo a regulation?
Because the Constitution gives Congress and ONLY Congress the sole authority as author of all Federal Law. The Progressive CREATED the regulatory state and the method by which regulators write law (regulations) on their own and then Congress must act, or else it remains as law. That method also has all new regulation entering the federal register and Congressional approval of those additions is in bulk in a rubber stamp manner with Congress not required to individually review, discuss, vote on in Committee, bring to the floor of the Senate and House and vote to approve or not. The whole method, invented by the Progressive is to avoid representative government law making - what we pretend we have - to make law. The whole approach amounts to Congressional abdication of authority the Constitution gave Congress and no one else.
We can end the whole tyranny of it by eliminating any deadline for Congress to use the Congressional review act.
And if McConnell will not pull the nuclear trigger if necessary to get this done, the GOP Senators should caucus and remove him as leader, giving someone who is not afraid of offending the Dims.
White House faces rough road to deregulation because the GOPe has no interest in it.
Under current senate rules, regs can be cancelled under CRA with 51 votes, and is not subject to filibuster. New legislation would be subject to filibuster. The Senate needs to go full nuclear option.
Agreed
A potentially better way to handle it is for Congress to pass no bill without an automatic sunset clause. It worked for the “assault weapons ban”. Best of all is to have both the initial “first pass” review AND the sunset clause.
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