Congress

Report: Republicans Consider Deregulation Push Before They Lose Control

Written by SK Ashby

What are congressional Republicans going to do for the remainder of the year?

There's not a whole lot they can do because the government has been funded through at least September and the rest of their agenda could be subject to filibusters so they're searching for measures they can pass through a simple majority.

The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to repeal regulations that are fairly new or haven't been implemented yet with a simple majority, but Politico reports that Republicans are considering using the Review Act to repeal regulations that have been on the books for decades.

While Republicans in the Trump era have already taken advantage of the 1996 law to remove more than a dozen recently issued rules, this would be the first time that Congress will have used it to kill a regulatory policy that is several years old.

Now, actions going back to President Bill Clinton’s administration could be in play under the procedure GOP lawmakers are undertaking, forcing numerous agencies to reconsider how they roll out new regulations.

“It’s a hugely important precedent,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the architect of the effort, said in an interview. “It’s potentially a big, big opening.”

We can't sit here and say with absolute certainty that Republicans are going to lose control of either chamber of Congress in November, but I don't think this is something you do unless you expect you're going to lose control.

I wouldn't call it their last chance but, if they do lose control of either chamber, it's anyone guess how long it could be before they control both chambers and the White House again. Trump is willing to sign anything they send him, but just sending him something to sign has been a problem for our Republican-controlled Congress.

Speaker Paul Ryan likes to say his Congress has been productive, but that's only true if you count measures that were passed by the House but never adopted by the Senate or signed into law.