LET’S GO CRA-ZY (AGAIN) Republicans are vowing an all-out war in the opening days of the next Congress against Biden administration regulations in areas as varied as energy, financial, housing and education policy. They’re hoping for a redux of 2017 and 2018, when Republicans used their unified control of government and the powers of the Congressional Review Act to ax 16 regulations. With a coming 53-47 majority, GOP senators say they’re again primed to use the CRA, one of their most potent tools to undo Democratic policies — and one that tends to unite the often fractious Republican conference. But — and it’s a major but — an extremely narrow House margin could make things hard to pull off, at least for the first couple of months of the Trump administration. While the GOP could lose as many as three votes in the Senate with Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) casting tie-breakers, the House very well be at a one-vote margin until early April (more on that math below). Still, that hasn’t dampened Republicans’ enthusiasm around the CRA. “We're going to want to go and evaluate everything that fits into the jurisdiction” of the 1996 review law, incoming Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Inside Congress. Invoking it involves passing simple-majority votes in both chambers plus a presidential signature, no filibusters allowed. President Joe Biden’s administration recognized this looming threat and prioritized early completion of rulemakings to shield them from congressional challenge. Still, dozens of regulations were finalized after Aug. 1, 2024, leaving them vulnerable to the CRA, according to Public Citizen, which closely tracks the potential use of the law. (That corresponds to the date identified by the Congressional Research Service after which rules might be vulnerable to revocation.) Barrasso’s hardly alone with vows of aggressive use of the tool, which had only been successfully used once before Trump’s first term. “We’ll do every possible regulation we can get to,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “It's a wonderful tool for undoing the bureaucratic excess of the Biden administration.” “On some of these crazy policies we ought to just get rid of them as fast as we can,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said he’d instructed his staff to find regulations that may be good targets for challenges. “This is the only time the Congressional Review Act actually has teeth, otherwise it’s a messaging vehicle,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, referring to the first months of a new trifecta, since using the CRA effectively requires one party to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a relatively infrequent occurrence in modern politics. But what’s also rare is a low-single-digit-margin in the House, meaning that GOP leaders will need to keep defections almost nonexistent if they are hoping to match or exceed their record from 2017. — Anthony Adragna GOOD EVENING! Welcome to Inside Congress, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Wednesday, Nov. 27 where we’ll wish all of our readers a wonderful Thanksgiving, however you’re marking the day. PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Dec. 2.
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment