If it looks like the Biden administration has been rushing out a lot of new regulations in recent days, there’s a reason. The administration faces a deadline to ensure that new rules can’t be blocked through the Congressional Review Act in 2025 and that deadline isn't set in stone.
The CRA allows Congress to reconsider and potentially nullify rules that have been issued within the previous 60 legislative days. However, unless lawmakers add legislative days to the current congressional calendar, the 60-day lookback creates a May 22 deadline for the administration to finalize rules in time to exempt them from CRA scrutiny in 2025, legal experts say.
CRA resolutions must be approved by a simple majority of in House and Senate and signed into law by the president.
Republicans have pushed through numerous CRA resolutions during the current Congress, but they have largely served as messaging bills since they required President Joe Biden’s signature, or two-thirds majorities of both chambers to override his veto.
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Republicans would have a realistic chance of repealing rules that are finalized later this year, if they win control of both houses of Congress and Donald Trump wins the presidency in November.
CRA “ultimately requires the current administration to assess the threat of a CRA resolution against certain rules and determine whether to issue the rule safely before the deadline or risk a potential CRA challenge,” the Covington and Burling law firm says in an analysis of CRA issues.
The analysis also says that “calculating the CRA deadline is exceedingly difficult for federal agencies because it is a moving target. The House and Senate may each cancel or add days to their legislative calendar right up until adjournment, making it impossible to calculate the deadline with precision. Moreover, the lookback period starts on the date that is 60 days before adjournment, regardless of which chamber reaches that threshold first.”
Over the last two weeks of April, the Labor Department announced new protections for H-2A farmworkers, the Interior Department finalized regulations allowing conservation leasing of land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency issued new emission standards for power plants, and USDA finalized new school nutrition standards, and officially declared salmonella an adulterant in some chicken products.
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