On February 22, 2017, an all-star panel at the Heritage Foundation discussed “Reawakening the Congressional Review Act” – a statute which gives Congress sixty legislative days to disapprove a proposed federal rule (subject to presidential veto), under an expedited review process not subject to Senate filibuster.  Until very recently, the CRA was believed to apply only to very recently promulgated regulations.  Thus, according to conventional wisdom, while the CRA might prove useful in blocking some non-cost-beneficial Obama Administration midnight regulations, it could not be invoked to attack serious regulatory agency overreach dating back many years.

Last week’s panel, however, demonstrated that conventional wisdom is no match for the careful textual analysis of laws – the sort of analysis that too often is given short-shrift by  commentators.  Applying straightforward statutory construction techniques, my Heritage colleague Paul Larkin argued persuasively that the CRA actually reaches back over 20 years to authorize congressional assessment of regulations that were not properly submitted to Congress.  Paul’s short February 15 article on the CRA (reprinted from The Daily Signal), intended for general public consumption, lays it all out, and merits being reproduced in its entirety:

In Washington, there is a saying that regulators never met a rule they didn’t like.  Federal agencies, commonly referred to these days as the “fourth branch of government,” have been binding the hands of the American people for decades with overreaching regulations. 

All the while, Congress sat idly by and let these agencies assume their new legislative role.  What if Congress could not only reverse this trend, but undo years of burdensome regulations dating as far back as the mid-1990s?  It turns out it can, with the Congressional Review Act. 

The Congressional Review Act is Congress’ most recent effort to trim the excesses of the modern administrative state.  Passed into law in 1996, the Congressional Review Act allows Congress to invalidate an agency rule by passing a joint resolution of disapproval, not subject to a Senate filibuster, that the president signs into law. 

Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress is given 60 legislative days to disapprove a rule and receive the president’s signature, after which the rule goes into effect.  But the review act also sets forth a specific procedure for submitting new rules to Congress that executive agencies must carefully follow. 

If they fail to follow these specific steps, Congress can vote to disapprove the rule even if it has long been accepted as part of the Federal Register.  In other words, if the agency failed to follow its obligations under the Congressional Review Act, the 60-day legislative window never officially started, and the rule remains subject to congressional disapproval. 

The legal basis for this becomes clear when we read the text of the Congressional Review Act. 

According to the statute, the period that Congress has to review a rule does not commence until the later of two events: either (1) the date when an agency publishes the rule in the Federal Register, or (2) the date when the agency submits the rule to Congress.

This means that if a currently published rule was never submitted to Congress, then the nonexistent “submission” qualifies as “the later” event, and the rule remains subject to congressional review.

This places dozens of rules going back to 1996 in the congressional crosshairs.

The definition of “rule” under the Congressional Review Act is quite broad—it includes not only the “junior varsity” statutes that an agency can adopt as regulations, but also the agency’s interpretations of those laws. This is vital because federal agencies often use a wide range of documents to strong-arm regulated parties.

The review act reaches regulations, guidance documents, “Dear Colleague” letters, and anything similar.

The Congressional Review Act is especially powerful because once Congress passes a joint resolution of disapproval and the president signs it into law, the rule is nullified and the agency cannot adopt a “substantially similar” rule absent an intervening act of Congress.

This binds the hands of federal agencies to find backdoor ways of re-imposing the same regulations.

The Congressional Review Act gives Congress ample room to void rules that it finds are mistaken.  Congress may find it to be an indispensable tool in its efforts to rein in government overreach.

Now that Congress has a president who is favorable to deregulation, lawmakers should seize this opportunity to find some of the most egregious regulations going back to 1996 that, under the Congressional Review Act, still remain subject to congressional disapproval.

In the coming days, my colleagues will provide some specific regulations that Congress should target.

For a more fulsome exposition of the CRA’s coverage, see Paul’s February 8 Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum, “The Reach of the Congressional Review Act.”  Hopefully, Congress and the Trump Administration will take advantage of this newly-discovered legal weapon as they explore the most efficacious means to reduce the daunting economic burden of federal overregulation (for a subject matter-specific exploration of the nature and size of that burden, see the most recent Heritage Foundation “Red Tape Rising” report, here).