As the Biden-Harris administration nears the home stretch of its first term, a critical deadline has passed. Depending on the outcome of this presidential election, future key federal legislation could be rolled back.
The Congressional Review Act, a bipartisan law passed in 1996, empowers Congress to overturn federal regulations through resolutions of disapproval. Biden would never repeal any of his own agencies’ favorite rules, but a new administration could roll back some of them if it becomes clear in the coming months that they will not be passed before the final 60 legislative days of the 118th Congress.
The exact deadline has yet to be determined (George Washington University has a dashboard that enthusiasts can monitor), but it will likely be between late spring and early summer of 2024.
Although the CRA has rarely been used to repeal rules—less than two dozen times in its history—it remains a powerful tool, especially in times of political change. When the Trump administration came to power in 2017, it repealed more than a dozen Obama rules. That’s not a lot, considering that over 3,000 rules are enacted each year, but nothing.
As I wrote in my last Forbes Article “A Glide Path to Repealing Biden Rules in 119th According to the CRA (Republican Congress), the effectiveness of the CRA is limited, but, as the GWU Regulatory Studies Center notes, it is successfully used as a communication tool and as a mechanism to influence the behavior of the authorities.
Revitalizing the CRA is especially important given the Biden administration’s ambitious and unwise regulatory agenda. This year’s spring edition of the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions revealed a significant increase in major regulations adopted by the Biden administration: from 53 in the fall 2023 edition to 97 in the spring 2024 edition.
Major regulations, which typically have an economic impact of over $100 million, are the sensitive potential targets for rejection by the CRA. Forbes The pieces list them all for policymakers to think about.
Interestingly, the Biden administration could continue to issue rules after the CRA deadline, betting that they would be difficult to reverse even with a change of president. While one would expect a drop in major rules in election years, such years are relatively high because the incumbent administration is packing up to leave and there is a late-night surge in rules.
Another, less used, approach to addressing important rules lies in the CRA’s requirement that, to be considered effective, any rule must be properly submitted to the Government Accountability Office and both houses of Congress. Not all rules meet these requirements, and there may be grounds to challenge their validity in new ways in a new Congress.
While the CRA disapproval resolution process offers the opportunity to reverse some of Biden’s regulatory actions, it is not a panacea. Regulatory reforms that actually limit the federal government’s scope for action require more fundamental changes, such as moving from congressional disapproval to congressional approval of major regulations.
To delve deeper into this topic, read my full article on Forbes Here.
