Draining the Regulatory Swamp - The Congressional Review Act is even better than we thought.

Nancy Pelosi says Republicans have accomplished nothing in 2017, and no doubt she wishes that were true. But the House has already voted to repeal 13 Obama-era regulations, and President Trump signed his third on Tuesday. Now the GOP should accelerate by fully utilizing the 1996 Congressional Review Act.

Republicans chose the damaging 13 rules based on a conventional reading of the CRA, which allows Congress to override regulations published within 60 legislative days, with simple (50-vote) majorities in both chambers. Yet the more scholars examine the law, which had only been used successfully once before this year, the clearer it is that the CRA gives Congress far more regulatory oversight than previously supposed.

Spearheading this review is the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Todd Gaziano—who helped write the 1996 act—and the Heritage Foundation’s Paul Larkin. Their legal findings, and a growing list of rules that might be subject to CRA, are on www.redtaperollback.com.

The pair argue, first, that the CRA defines “rule” broadly. The law relies on the definition in the Administrative Procedure Act, which includes any “agency statement” that is “designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy.” This includes major and minor rules as well as “guidance”—letters that spell out an agency’s interpretation of a law.

...The second discovery is the law’s definition of when the clock starts on Congress’s time to review rules. The CRA’s opening lines require any agency promulgating a rule to present a “report” containing the rule’s text and definition. The CRA explains that Congress’s review period begins either on the date the rule is published in the Federal Register, or the date Congress receives the report—whichever comes later. 

...A third discovery could be the most important. The opening words of the CRA read: “Before a rule can take effect” the federal agency in question must submit a Congressional report. No one has tested the legal limits of this provision, but a fair reading suggests the Trump Administration could declare any rule for which a report has not been submitted to be null and void.

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