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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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