More alluring still for lawmakers, once a rule has been axed via CRA, agencies are barred from issuing a similar rule without express authorization from Congress.  So not only is the CRA route quicker and easier than the usual legislative slog, it provides insurance against a pesky replacement rule. 

You might assume a law with such potential impact would have been tough to pass, or at least have been the source of hot partisan squabbling.  Quite the opposite: If there’s one thing legislators from both teams agree on, it’s that they deserve greater authority vis-à-vis the uppity executive branch.  And so the CRA passed quietly as a rider to the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement and Fairness Act, aka SBREFA. ( Remember: Keep it complicated, dull, and, ideally, heavy on impenetrable acronyms.) 

At the time, it enjoyed solid bipartisan backing.  Democratic Senator Harry Reid issued a joint statement, with Republican colleagues Don Nickles and Ted Stevens, praising the act for helping “redress the balance” between the branches.  Democratic Senator Carl Levin cheered, “If a rule goes too far afield from the intent of Congress in passing the statute in the first place, we can stop it.  That’s a new day, and one a long time in coming.” 

No question CRA made rollback simpler: Under the CRA, every rule issued by an agency must be submitted to both chambers for review.  Once notification occurs, any lawmaker can file a “resolution of disapproval” of the rule within 60 legislative days. ( Not to be confused with calendar days!)  With all Congress’s comings and going, the exact deadline can be tough to calculate (the House and Senate parliamentarians are the official arbiters), but the Congressional Research Service estimates that the new congress can go after rules issued as far back as mid-June of last year. 

Using special CRA procedures (the eye-glazing details of which I will skip, but which can be found here for the masochists among you) a resolution can be fast-tracked through committee and onto the floor of the Senate, where it is limited to 10 hours of debate. ( The act does not provide similar fast-tracking in the House because, why bother?  No filibusters.)  Once simple majorities in both chambers vote their support, the resolution is then whisked over to the president’s desk for consideration.  Easy-peasy. 

Now, it doesn’t take a political genius to spot the sticking point here.  Under normal circumstances, what self-respecting president is going to sign a resolution overturning a rule issued by his own administration?  Answer: none.  Which explains why, in 20 years on the books, the CRA has been successfully used exactly once.  That was in early 2001, when a Republican congress sent its new Republican president (Bush 43) a resolution targeting a workplace-ergonomics rule issued in the closing days of the Clinton administration. ( Bush signed it, and no similar rule has been attempted since.)