This is so cool
BREAKING: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel stops Bush’s last-minute regs. Emanuel signs a memorandum ordering all agencies and departments to stop all pending regulations until a legal and policy review can be conducted by the Obama administration.
sorry not much of a diary but news is still breaking
UPDATED
The order went out Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Obama was inaugurated president, in a memorandum signed by new White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. The notice of the action was contained in the first press release sent out by Obama's White House, and it came from deputy press secretary Bill Burton.
and here
Controversial late rules by the outgoing Bush administration include allowing the carrying of concealed weapons in some national parks and prohibiting medical facilities from receiving federal money for discriminating against doctors and nurses who refuse to assist with abortions or dispense contraceptives based on religious grounds.
federal law requires a 60-day waiting period before any major regulatory changes become law, so some presidents try to publish new major regulations to ensure they go into effect before the new president's inauguration on January 20.
this is a great start.
UPDATED
The question is can they really overturn this stuff? We'll the Obama team has been working on this stuff for months apparently and are trying many different avenues, congressional help will be key
The enactment of such rules has been the subject of a drumbeat of news reports in recent months. Though it can take years for a new administration to complete the process necessary to overturn a rule that has taken effect — allowing a president to tie his successor’s hands — Democrats will have far greater opportunity to rescind Mr. Bush’s late rules than has typically been the case in a period when the party in power changes. With Democratic control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, the political planets are aligned to make much of the Bush administration’s late handiwork unusually vulnerable.
Congress has the authority to rescind an agency’s regulation by passing legislation to trump the rule. Democrats in both chambers said they were considering attaching amendments rescinding various Bush-era rules to the coming stimulus package, which is considered “must-pass” legislation.
Democrats say that they are also considering using the Congressional Review Act of 1996, an obscure and rarely used process that sets up fast-track procedures to overturn regulations.
The law allows Congress to rescind a rule by passing a “resolution of disapproval,” which cannot be filibustered. The resolution also requires presidential approval and can be invoked only for a few months after a rule is issued.
This won't be easy and keeping the pressure on Congress seems to be the way to go since Obama has done his part so far just by issuing the order.
Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has introduced a bill, the Midnight Rule Act, that would give incoming cabinet secretaries — starting with the Obama administration — greater power to rewrite regulations issued during the final three months of the previous presidency.
“Congress needs to pass the Midnight Rule Act,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement, “to give President-elect Barack Obama the ability to quickly reverse these policies and undo these last, right-wing gasps of the Bush administration.”
But his bill would need to be enacted quickly amid a crowded field of other Congressional business if it is to have any impact on Mr. Bush’s rules. It would also have to avoid a filibuster by Republicans in the Senate.