In the 24 days since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the
Republican-controlled Congress has already moved to overturn four major
rules that the oil, gas, and coal industries spent millions of dollars
fighting during the Obama administration. First, Congress eliminated
the Stream Protection Rule, which would prevent toxic mine waste from being dumped in streams. Then Congress voted to get rid of a rule that
limited bribery and corruption in oil operations around the world. And
in the coming days, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote to overturn a
rule that limits methane pollution when oil and gas companies drill on public lands and to eliminate a rule that increases public input in public lands management decisions. Congress’s vulnerability to financial influence under the CRA is
rooted in the law’s obscure procedure for overturning regulations. Since
its passage in 1996,
the CRA has given Congress the power to overturn any regulation within
60 legislative days of it being issued by an executive branch agency. To
successfully overturn a rule, both chambers of Congress must pass, by
majority vote, a resolution of disapproval and then have the president
sign it. On a practical level, however, it is only after a change of
administration—and only if the new president and a new Congress both
wish to undo actions taken by the previous administration—that CRA
resolutions become likely to pass. Before this year, Congress had only
used the CRA successfully to overturn a single regulation: a Clinton
administration rule to establish ergonomics standards in the workplace. For
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Speaker Paul Ryan,
the CRA provides opportunities and limitations that are different than
other types of legislation. Notably, the CRA gives the new Congress
only 60 legislative days to
overturn rules issued by the Obama administration, and those rules must
have been finalized within 60 legislative days of the end of the last
Congress. According to the Congressional Research Service, 61 “major” rules and
regulations—the U.S. government defines major rules as those that would
have an annual effect on the economy of at least $100 million—that the
Obama administration finalized after June 13, 2016, are eligible to be
overturned by Congress using the CRA. The CRA, however, can be used to
overturn any rule—regardless of the scale of its economic benefits or
costs—that was finalized in this period. By one lobbying firm’s count,
more than 2,300 rules are currently eligible to be overturned under the CRA...more
GO, CONGRESS, GO!
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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