Guidance and the Congressional Review Act

Congress’s use of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reverse a panoply of Obama Administration rules has been the most important way it has pursued deregulation in the first year of the Trump Administration. But the effort to keep using it to deregulate—which is ongoing—would really take the statute beyond anywhere it has been used before. The CRA provides a streamlined legislative process for overturning rules adopted in opposition to the legislature’s wishes. Congress last used the tool to reverse a rule adopted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would have allowed consumer class actions against banks. The most important facet of the act for regulators is that, once used, it “salts the earth.” No “substantially similar” rule can be subsequently adopted by regulators once Congress has reversed a rule under the CRA. The CFPB, for example, will no longer be able to adopt another, even somewhat different,…

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