The Congressional Review Act ("CRA," 5 U.S.C. §§801-808) requires federal agencies to submit all of their final rules to both houses of Congress and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) before they can take effect. The act also establishes a special set of expedited or "fast track" legislative procedures, primarily in the Senate, through which Congress may enact joint resolutions disapproving agencies' final rules. Although the general powers of Congress permit it to overturn agency rules by legislation, the CRA is unique in permitting the use of expedited procedures for this purpose. If a rule is disapproved through the CRA procedures, the act specifies not only that the rule "shall not take effect" (or shall not continue, if it has already taken effect), but also that the rule may not be reissued in a "substantially" similar form without subsequent statutory authorization. The CRA was initially considered a reassertion of congressional authority over rulemaking agencies, but thus far it has had little direct effect on agency rules. After enactment, a CRA joint resolution of disapproval must be presented to the President for signature or veto. Under most circumstances, it is likely that the President would veto the resolution to protect rules developed under his own administration, and it may also be difficult for Congress to muster the two-thirds vote in both houses needed to overturn the veto. Of the nearly 50,000 final rules that have been submitted to Congress since the legislation was enacted in March 1996, the CRA has been used to disapprove only one rule—the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's November 2000 final rule on ergonomics. The March 2001 rejection of the ergonomics rule was the result of a specific set of circumstances created by a transition in party control of the presidency. The majority party in both houses of Congress was the same as the party of the incoming President (George W. Bush). When the new Congress convened in 2001 and adopted a resolution disapproving the rule published under the outgoing President (William J. Clinton), the incoming President did not veto the resolution. Congress may be most able to use the CRA to disapprove rules in similar, transition-related circumstances. This report addresses some of the implications of the CRA with regard to agency rulemaking in the final months of a presidential administration. It first notes the practice of increased rulemaking activity during this period, and describes how this practice has been addressed by two White House memoranda issued during the current Bush Administration. The report then briefly identifies key elements of the complex set of time periods established by the CRA—elements that define points during the disapproval process at which various actions may occur. This discussion focuses on the CRA provisions for carrying over the disapproval process into a subsequent session of Congress, and indicates how rules submitted at the end of a Congress may be affected by these provisions. Then, the report identifies the dates in previous sessions of Congress after which rules have (since the enactment of the CRA) been subject to these carryover provisions, and identifies some of the rules that may be issued in the final months of the current Bush Administration. At the conclusion of most recent presidential administrations, the volume of agency rulemaking has increased noticeably—a phenomenon that has been characterized as "midnight rulemaking." As one observer stated, putting rules into effect before the end of a presidency is "a way for an administration to have life after death," for the only way that a subsequent administration can change or eliminate the rule is by going back through the often lengthy rulemaking processes that are required by the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. §551 et seq. ) and various other statutes and executive orders. The current Bush Administration has responded to this situation by delaying and ultimately reducing the volume of effective rules issued in the last months of the Clinton Administration, and by protecting rules issued in its own last months from the possibility of similarly being rendered ineffective. During the final months of the Clinton Administration, federal agencies issued hundreds of final rules—a number of which were considered "major" under the CRA. In response to this action, on January 20, 2001, the Chief of Staff and Assistant to the new President, Andrew H. Card, Jr., sent a memorandum to the heads of all executive departments and agencies generally directing them to (1) not send proposed or final regulations to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), (2) withdraw regulations that had been sent to the OFR but not published in the Federal Register , and (3) postpone for 60 days the effective date of regulations that had been published in the Federal Register but had not yet taken effect. The memorandum cited the desire to "ensure that the President's appointees have the opportunity to review any new or pending regulations." In 2002, GAO reported that 90 final rules had their effective dates delayed as a result of the Card memorandum, and 15 rules still had not taken effect one year after the memorandum was issued. The Bush Administration has also taken action in anticipation of possible "midnight rules" at the end of the current President's term. On May 9, 2008, White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten issued a memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies stating that the Administration needed to "resist the historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final months." Therefore, Bolten said that, except in "extraordinary circumstances, regulations to be finalized in this Administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008, and final regulations should be issued no later than November 1, 2008." He also said that the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget would "coordinate an effort to complete Administration priorities in this final year," and the OIRA Administrator would "report on a regular basis regarding agency compliance with this memorandum." The CRA is a complex statute, and among the act's chief complexities is its use of at least four different ways to measure the passage of time, each for different purposes: calendar days ; days of continuous session , which excludes all days when either the House of Representatives or the Senate is adjourned for more than three days; session days , which include only calendar days on which a chamber is in session; and legislative days , which end each time a chamber adjourns and begin each time it convenes after an adjournment. The following sections describe how the CRA uses each of these measures of time, focusing especially on the way in which they affect Congress's ability to use the CRA disapproval process for rules submitted toward the end of a session of Congress, and especially toward the end of a presidential term. Section 801(a)(3) of the CRA generally requires that the effective dates of all "major" rules be delayed for 60 calendar days after the date they are provided to Congress or published in the Federal Register , whichever is later. This delay in the effective dates helps to ensure that Congress has an opportunity to review and, if necessary, disapprove these major rules before they take effect. All non-major rules are allowed to take effect as stipulated in the rules themselves. Nevertheless, even if a rule has already taken effect, the CRA can still be used to disapprove it if time remains in the periods established for congressional proceedings. Section 802(a) of the CRA states that a joint resolution of disapproval may be introduced as soon as a rule is received by Congress, but the resolution must be introduced no later than 60 days after that date, "excluding days either House of Congress is adjourned for more than 3 days during a session of Congress." This 60 days of continuous session defines the "initiation period" for CRA resolutions of disapproval. For example, if the House of Representatives and the Senate adjourn on a Friday and both reconvene on the following Monday or Tuesday, the 60-day "clock" for the introduction of resolutions of disapproval continues to run throughout the weekend because neither house was out of session for more than three days. On the other hand, if the House is in recess for a month but the Senate continues in session, then the 60-day "clock" for this "initiation period" stops until the House comes back into session. Once introduced, resolutions of disapproval are referred to the committees of jurisdiction in each house of Congress. The House of Representatives would consider the resolution under its general procedures, very likely as prescribed by a special rule reported from the Committee on Rules. In the Senate, however, if the committee has not reported a disapproval resolution within 20 calendar days after the regulation has been submitted and published, then the committee may be discharged of its responsibilities and the resolution placed on the Senate calendar if 30 Senators submit a petition to do so. Once the Senate committee has reported or been discharged, the CRA makes consideration of the measure privileged, prohibits various other dilatory actions, disallows amendment, and limits floor debate to 10 hours. Section 802(e) of the CRA states that the Senate has 60 session days from the date a rule is submitted to Congress or published in the Federal Register to use these expedited procedures and act on a joint resolution of disapproval. This "action period" for the Senate includes only the calendar days on which the Senate is actually in session, in contrast to the "days of continuous session" for the initiation period, which includes all days other than those when either house is in adjournment lasting more than three days. Because of this difference in which days are counted, the "action period" will normally last longer than the "initiation period."