The Congressional Review Act of 1996 may be an effective tool for rolling back recent federal regulations implementing President Obama’s policy initiatives. But it is limited. It applies only to very recent rules. It requires action by both houses of Congress and the President’s signature. It is strongly limited by political factors. In the 21 years since it was adopted, it has been used only once.

Congress is seeking stronger weapons. H.R. 5, the “Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017,” represents a substantial rewrite of the existing Administrative Procedure Act. H.R. 5 includes provisions that would allow courts to review agency rules on a “de novo” basis, without any deference to the agency’s interpretation of Constitutional or statutory requirements and other regulations.

H.R. 26, “Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2017,” introduces a new mechanism for Congressional review of a broad category of Federal agency regulatory actions defined as “major rules.” Basically, the mechanism in H.R. 26 is designed to prevent a broad class of actions by Executive Branch agencies and independent regulatory agencies from becoming effective without a Joint Resolution of approval passed by Congress and signed by the President within a narrowly prescribed period (70 legislative days).

Even if these bills get through Congress and are signed by President Trump, they will likely face challenges in the Supreme Court. H.R. 26 in particular faces an uphill climb. For the reasons discussed in this article, the Joint Resolution mechanism in H.R. 26 suffers from the same Constitutional infirmities as the “one-House veto” that was popular in the 1970s but declared unconstitutional in INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983).
Continue Reading Why Congress can’t have the one-House veto in H.R. 26