Memo: Voters Support Using the Congressional Review Act to Reverse Trump Era Deregulation

By Justin Slaughter and Ethan Winter

Introduction

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) was enacted in 1996 as an emergency brake on federal rulemakings that lack broad-based political support. Under the CRA, once a federal regulation has been finalized and published in the compendium of federal regulations known as the Federal Register, Congress has sixty legislative days to vote to disapprove of that regulation. If both houses of Congress vote to disapprove in that time period and the president signs that disapproval, the federal regulation is reversed and the agency that promulgated it cannot release a similar regulation in the future without new congressional authorization to do so. If any step of this isn’t successful—say, the president vetoes the disapproval—then the regulation stands. (Notably, the vote under the CRA is not subject to a filibuster under current rules.)

Although not initially conceived as a partisan weapon, the CRA has become one over the last four years. Until 2016, it was used successfully to undo a congressional regulation only once, after a Clinton administration rule on ergonomics passed with bipartisan support. However, due to a quirk of the CRA, a regulation that is completed within the last sixty days of one congressional session may be briefly subject to CRA review during the next session of Congress as well. This loophole allows a new presidential administration to undo certain late-term actions of its predecessor, even though it is not at all clear the CRA was intended to be used as a weapon against past administrations.

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