While the media focuses on sexy topics—Russian spy intrigue, botched Muslim bans, White House palace intrigue, emerging foreign policy challenges, and the health care bill’s collapse—Team Trump has been quietly rolling back job-killing regulations and appointing a boring (by design), yet highly competent, Supreme Court Justice who almost certainly will be confirmed on Friday.
Despite evidence to the contrary, President Trump is making changes in his first 100 days that will affect America for decades to come.
One of his key weapons has been the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a 1996 law that allows Congress to repeal recent regulations. Before Trump took office, this law had been used just once. Since taking office, however, President Trump has signed 11 of these CRAs into law, effectively reversing several last-minute Obama-era regulations.
The window for using this tactic is closing; the CRA can only be used within 60 days of Congress being informed of a new regulation. But here’s where things have the potential to get very interesting: Once a regulation is repealed, agencies are also banned from issuing new rules that are “substantially similar” to the one that was just vetoed.
Use of the CRA isn’t news to Instapundit readers (or to Bill Whittle fans), but Lewis omitted one important detail. Whether due to spite or laziness, many Obama-era agencies never bothered to notify Congress of new regulations — so the 60-day clock has yet to start ticking on regs going back years.