As of Monday, March 10, legislators have introduced 57 Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions, including several that were introduced before the specified time cutoffs. We have continued to see some movement around some of the resolutions.
Congress has already voted on eight CRA resolutions
Legislators have voted on the following resolutions:
- S.J.Res.12 and H.J.Res.35, targeting the Environmental Protection Agency rule relating to “Waste Emissions Charge for Petroleum and Natural Gas Systems: Procedures for Facilitating Compliance, Including Netting and Exemptions.” These two target the same regulation, and both the House and the Senate voted favorably on the resolution (220-206 and 52-47, respectively). Ultimately, the Senate voted on the House version of the resolution (although they are arguably identical), and it has already been presented to President Trump to be signed into law.
- S.J.Res.11, targeting the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rule relating to “Protection of Marine Archaeological Resources.” This resolution passed the Senate (54-44) and the House (221-202) and should be on its way to the president’s desk any day now.
- H.J.Res.20, targeting the Department of Energy rule relating to “Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Gas-fired Instantaneous Water Heaters.” This resolution has only passed the House (221-198) and has already been placed in the Senate calendar.
- S.J.Res.28, targeting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule relating to “Defining Larger Participants of a Market for General-Use Digital Consumer Payment Applications.” This resolution passed the Senate (51-47), with 51 Republicans voting in favor and 46 Democrats along with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) voting against.
- H.J.Res.61, targeting the Environmental Protection Agency rule relating to “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Rubber Tire Manufacturing.” This resolution passed the House (216-202) and has already been received in the Senate but has not been included on the Senate calendar yet.
- H.J.Res.42, targeting the Department of Energy rule relating to “Energy Conservation Program for Appliance Standards: Certification Requirements, Labeling Requirements, and Enforcement Provisions for Certain Consumer Products and Commercial Equipment.” This resolution passed the House (222-203) and has already been received in the Senate but has not been included on the Senate calendar yet.
- S.J.Res.3, targeting the Internal Revenue Service rule relating to “Gross Proceeds Reporting by Brokers That Regularly Provide Services Effectuating Digital Asset Sales.” From all the resolutions Congress has voted on, this one has had the broadest bipartisan appeal, with a final vote of 70-27 in the Senate. This resolution has been added to the House calendar and could receive a vote as soon as tomorrow, March 11.
Looking ahead, the Senate has placed three more resolutions on its legislative calendar. In the Senate, S.J.Res.7 targets a Federal Communications Commission rule retaining to “Addressing the Homework Gap Through the E-Rate Program,” S.J.Res.30 targets a National Park Service rule relating to “Glen Canyon National Recreation Area; Motor Vehicles,” and S.J.Res.4 targets a Department of Energy rule relating to “Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Gas-fired Instantaneous Water Heaters.”
In the House, there is currently one resolution on the calendar that hasn’t yet been considered: H.J.Res.25, an Internal Revenue Service rule relating to “Gross Proceeds Reporting by Brokers That Regularly Provide Services Effectuating Digital Asset Sales.” As noted above, that resolution has been included in the House calendar for Tuesday, March 11. This resolution is the House companion of S.J.Res.3.
Which agencies are being targeted and how does this compare with Trump’s first term?
So far, resolutions have targeted 19 federal agencies, with the EPA being the most frequent. So far, there are 15 CRA resolutions targeting EPA regulations. At a distant second are the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) with 6 resolutions, and the Department of Energy with 5 resolutions.
Since it is common to see CRA resolutions targeting the same regulation being introduced in the House and the Senate, the following analysis focuses instead on the individual regulations under attack, instead of the CRA resolutions. The graphs below show the number of targeted rules by agency (so far):
This graph shows the alignment in policy priorities between the executive and Republicans in Congress. There are currently 38 rules that have been targeted by CRA resolutions, with half of them (19) pertaining to energy and the environment (from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the Department of the Interior (DOI), the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and the National Park Service (NPS)). These span a range of issues, from energy efficiency to land use and archaeological resources, and the entire deregulatory program is consistent with a relentless push for upending natural resources and land management (in favor of the extractive industry and non-conservation goals) and climate and energy regulations.
The number of rules under threat by CRA resolutions in this Congress already surpassed the number of rules targeted during the first Trump administration. The graph below shows the number of targeted rules (by agency) in 2017.
In 2017, 36 rules were targeted by CRA resolutions, of which 16 were signed by President Trump. Energy and the environment were also a big focus during the first Trump administration, with 22 rules being the focus of CRA resolutions, and we can observe some consistency between both administrations (in particular regarding land use, emissions standards, and oil and gas activities). The pace with which these resolutions move through the pipeline will be critical, since once a resolution is introduced, the Senate has 60 session days to pass it.
This intense focus on energy- and environment-related regulations underscores the extent to which this area of policy has become politically polarized in recent decades. Opposition to the rules remains popular within the conservative base, but unpopular with the broader public. This would explain why conservatives in Congress have turned to the CRA to advance their policy priorities — which allows them to do so with bare partisan majorities — rather than avail themselves of the regular-order lawmaking process to amend the underlying statutes that authorized these rules. In turn, this dynamic underscores how the CRA reinforces partisan-induced congressional dysfunction at a time when we need to alleviate it.
