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The Hill
The Republicans' strategy to block Obama’s regulations
By Tim Devaney and Lydia Wheeler

The GOP is preparing to mount a full-scale assault on President Obama’s regulatory agenda, using the party’s strengthened hand in Congress to delay, soften or block contentious administration rules at every turn.

As long as Obama sits atop the executive branch, Republicans’ power to derail scores of rulemaking efforts now under way is limited. But control of both the House and Senate in the next Congress will enable GOP lawmakers to ratchet up their attacks on what they view as overzealous regulation.

“So long as we have this president the federal agencies can go around Congress," said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) "But we can make it very, very difficult for them."

Inhofe, who is poised to become chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is certain to take a leading role in the GOP push against regulations at the center of Obama’s climate action plan.

Critics of Obama’s regulatory policies are likely to look to the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows lawmakers to disapprove of regulations that have already been finalized and stop them from going into effect.

Inhofe, for instance, says he intends to push such a measure against the EPA’s newly proposed ozone rules, which manufacturers say could cost industry $270 billion in compliance costs during its first year alone. However, the president would have to approve such a measure, which is highly unlikely.

Only once before has the CRA been used successfully to block a regulation — a Labor Department rule on ergonomics overturned in 2001.

“The challenge for Republicans is President Obama would have to sign a resolution disapproving of the rule his own agency put out,” said Dan Bosch, manager of regulatory policy at the National Federation of Independent Businesses. "So you can see how that would basically never happen.”

Similarly, Senate Republicans do not have enough of a majority to prevent a filibuster on anti-regulatory legislation — nor could they override a veto from President Obama, without support from Democrats.

“In the rulemaking space, the president has the upper hand,” said Public Citizen President Robert Weissman.  “It’s going to be difficult for congressional Republicans to muster legislation to stop any rule and succeed,” he added.

Further, Weissman disputed the suggestion from many conservative observers that the Obama administration is likely to unleash a flood of new regulations in the coming months.

The administration’s formal rulemaking agenda, released last Friday, lists 23 significant new actions, compared to 21 in the previous agenda.
 
“I don’t think there’s any reason to believe there’s a Tsunami of regulations coming,” Weissman said.

However, Republicans see value in moving ahead, under the auspices of regulatory reform, with a series of bills that passed the House the current Congress, only to stall in the Democratic-controlled Senate...

Read the rest of the article at The Hill


 
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