Republicans on Capitol Hill have a plan to pump the brakes on California’s ban on gas cars – one that would break decades of precedent – and possibly the law, according to a new report.
If the GOP efforts move forward, it could open the door for Congress to easily overturn any agency action, including licensing pipelines, approving mergers and granting permits for major infrastructure projects, former administration officials and attorneys told NOTUS on Wednesday.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, told the publication that Republicans will invoke the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, to accomplish their goal of undoing waivers allowing California to phase out gas cars ushered in under former President Joe Biden.
“The question on the CRA, on the California waiver, is whether it was a rule or not. And we believe it is,” Capito told NOTUS. “Once they submitted it to us, it’s a rule. [Lee] Zeldin did. Then we can take it down,” the MAGA lawmaker added, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
The act would allow a simple majority in the Senate to “fast-track” the repeal of some regulations. It would also test the Senate parliamentarian on the act’s boundaries, the publication noted.
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“The CRA, created in 1996, was rarely used until Trump’s first administration,” according to NOTUS. “It’s exempt from judicial review, meaning that it’s up to Congress to self-regulate on what’s within the boundaries of the law. Republicans have already begun making the case that the CRA should be used to repeal more agency actions — the implications for which could be significant every time power shifts in Washington.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environmental Committee, framed the efforts to unravel the waivers as “a bit of a mystery." But it remains unclear if he or any other Democratic lawmakers plan to raise a point of order with the parliamentarian, whose job it is to decide whether the body is following its own set of rules.
Richard Revesz, who headed the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under the Biden administration, said Congress would be “acting lawlessly” if it plowed ahead with using the CRA on the waivers. Jesse Cross, a former attorney in the Office of the Legislative Counsel for the House, told NOTUS the Republican plan was “just another troubling step in the erosion of the rule of law."