
How a rarely used Congressional rule could help Republicans roll back Biden-era regulations
How a rarely used Congressional rule could help Republicans roll back Biden-era regulations

The rules of Congress are byzantine and seemingly endless. And with the start of the new Congress and administration, a rarely used one, called the Congressional Review Act, has come out of the woodwork. It could allow Republicans to roll back some… but not all… Biden-era rules and regulations.
Marketplace senior Washington correspondent Kimberly Adams joined “Marketplace Morning Report” host Sabri Ben-Achour to help break it down. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Sabri Ben-Achour: Remind us what is the Congressional Review Act?
Kimberly Adams: It’s a law from 1996 that allows Congress to overturn rules and regulations issued by the last administration with just a simple majority in both houses, plus the president’s signature. But it kind of takes a unique situation: You need to have a flip of control of the White House, plus control of both houses of Congress by the new president’s party. That’s been a relatively rare scenario since the CRA became law, but Trump has had this situation both times he entered the White House.
Ben-Achour: We have already seen the Trump administration rescind some Biden rules and regulations via executive order, but what sorts of policies might be at risk because of this CRA?
Adams: So there’s a look-back window in terms of how far back Congress can go to undo regulations, and it goes back to around August of last year. George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center has been tracking which of Biden’s rules and regulations could be subject to the CRA, and the team there figures there are about 1,300 rules that Congress could target, although only about 100 or so are viewed as significant. Sarah Hay is a policy analyst there, and she gave me a few examples.
Sarah Hay: There’s an EPA rule targeting methane emissions, and then also EPA’s rule telling water systems to remove all lead pipes in the next 10 years. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s rule that’s prohibiting creditors from considering medical information.
Adams: But, of course, it’s up to members of Congress, which — if any — of these they’re going to prioritize.
Ben-Achour: Well, is there anything to stop Congress from just rolling back everything?
Adams: Well, I mean, time is a big one. In addition to that limited look-back window, each rule or regulation they want to overturn has to be handled separately; they can’t just bundle a bunch of them together. And floor time in Congress is pretty limited. But the bigger issue is that if Congress uses the CRA to cancel out a policy, it means the affected agency can never issue a similar rule. Here’s Sarah Hay at the Regulatory Studies Center again.
Hay: And so if there’s a subject that an agency regulated on, and Congress is thinking about overturning it, but then they might say, “Oh, but maybe we want to issue a regulation on that ourselves in the future.
Adams: And so to preserve that option for the future, members of Congress may want to leave it to the executive branch to tweak a regulation rather than completely throw it out.
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