With Trump’s Signature, Dozens of Obama’s Rules Could Fall

[Fasglas]

Seems The President will be busy on Day 1.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/bu...fall.html?_r=0

Dozens of major regulations passed recently by the Obama administration — including far-reaching changes on health care, consumer protections and environmental safety — could be undone with the stroke of a pen by Donald J. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress starting in January, thanks to a little-used law that dates back to 1996.

And it comes with a scorched-earth kicker: If the law is used to strike down a rule, the federal agency that issued it is barred from enacting similar regulation again in the future.

The obscure law — called the Congressional Review Act — was passed 20 years ago at the behest of Newt Gingrich, then the House speaker and now a member of Mr. Trump’s transition team. It gives Congress 60 legislative days to review and override major regulations enacted by federal agencies. In the Senate, the vote would not be subject to filibuster.

The president can veto the rejection, which usually renders the law toothless. But when one party controls both the White House and Congress, it can be a powerful legislative weapon.

So far it has only been successfully used once: In 2001, a Republican Congress invoked it to eliminate workplace safety regulations adopted in the final months of President Clinton’s tenure. President George W. Bush signed the repeal two months after his inauguration, wiping out stricter ergonomics rules that had been 10 years in the making.

On Jan. 20, when Mr. Trump takes office with a Republican-controlled Congress — one that has indicated its zeal for undoing President Obama’s doings — more than 150 rules adopted since late May are potentially vulnerable to the ax, according to an analysis by the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center.

“It allows the election results to be applied almost retroactively, to snip off activity that happened at the end of the last administration,” said Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown.

The regulations at risk include:

■ Many environmental mandates, including limits on formaldehyde use and stricter truck fuel efficiency rules;

■ A Food and Drug Administration ban on the sale of antibacterial soaps;

■ A requirement that federal contractors provide paid sick leave for their workers;

■ Stricter consumer protections on prepaid debit cards;

■ Federal loan forgiveness for students at schools that shut down;

■ A rule that bars nursing homes that receive federal funding from requiring residents to resolve all disputes through arbitration, rather than in court.

Under Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s leadership, the House has used the law several times to try to reject a number of the Obama administration’s policies. Those challenges were symbolic — President Obama vetoed every one that reached his desk — but President-elect Trump can approve any sent to him after he takes office. Mr. Ryan’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

“I don’t think they’ll go after every single rule, but I think you’ll get eight to 10 that may be targeted,” said Sam Batkins, the director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, a right-leaning group that has been tracking which regulations are subject to congressional review.

The threat posed by the law may slow the usual rush of “midnight regulations” that administrations typically race to finish in their final days. This year, it will be a high-stakes game of chicken — put out a rule and hope it survives, or hold off, to preserve the chance to revisit it in the future?

“I would imagine there will be a serious discussion about regulations that they were planning to finalize,” said Susan E. Dudley, the director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center. “The bluntness of the C.R.A. may be exactly what makes it appealing to the next Congress and president.”

The Labor Department has never tried to revive the rule that President Bush struck down.

“Because this has only been done once before, there’s no litigation history,” said Stuart Shapiro, a Rutgers professor of public policy who previously worked at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the unit that coordinates reviews of executive branch regulations.

“It wipes the rule out for quite a while, at the very least,” he said. “We don’t know what would happen if an agency eventually decided to go back and try again.”

Because Congress takes so many breaks, 60 legislative days stretches out for many calendar months. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the review deadline for the Obama administration’s rules will fall at the end of May, based on the planned schedule for the rest of this year.

Adjourning early would buy Congress some extra days. When the new Congress convenes, the clock resets and lawmakers have additional time to review eligible rules.

Some Republican lawmakers are eager to slash where they can.

On Tuesday, the Interior Department issued a new regulation designed to control emissions of methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — from oil and natural gas wells on federal and Indian tribal lands.

It is a relatively small part of a larger set of regulations that the Obama administration has been rolling out to prevent inadvertent leaks from wells, processing plants and pipelines. With a few exceptions, the oil and gas industry has opposed the regulations as unnecessarily costly.

Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, fired off a scathing statement.

“Congress has many tools with which to rescind this rule, and I look forward to working with the incoming Trump administration to ensure economic expansion prevails over misguided bureaucratic interference,” he said.

Daisy Letendre, Mr. Inhofe’s communications director, said the Congressional Review Act was one of those “tools” to which he referred.

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1st reply but did not read

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