On Tuesday the Department of Interior announced the Methane and Waste Prevention Rule to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas operations on public and American Indian trust lands. It replaces a 30-year-old regulation controlling the venting, flaring, and leaks of natural gas, which add to the greenhouse gas burden of the atmosphere and thus contribute to global warming.
But the rule could fall prey to an override under the Congressional Review Act of 1996. And given the snarly attitude of most Republicans toward environmental, healthcare and consumer protection rules, scores of other new regulations approved by the Obama administration in the past six months could face the same fate, reports Stacy Cowley at The New York Times.
Pushed into law 20 years ago by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich—who is now on the Trump transition team—the law gives Congress 60 legislative days to review major regulations issued by federal agencies. Because Congress takes so many breaks, this means that rules issued all the way back to May 23 or thereabouts are at risk. Such overrides are subject to presidential vetoes, and President Obama has rejected every one of several attempts by House Speaker Paul Ryan to dump new rules. With the White House and both houses of Congress in Republican hands, vetoes of any rule overrides seem unlikely come the new year.
Just as was the case with the George W. Bush administration, the Obama administration pushed hard in its final year in office to get major rules approved before May to avoid having them run afoul of the review act with the possibility of there being a Republican in the White House. Timothy Noah reported in May that storming the deadline isn’t new:
“It’s always part of the calculation,” said Michael Hancock, former assistant administrator for policy at the Labor Department’s wage and hour division, “because it can obviously impact all of the work that’s been done on a fairly complex regulation.”
The review law also includes a poison provision that prohibits a federal agency from issuing a rule in the future that is similar to an overridden rule. Only once has an override succeeded. That was in 2001, when the law was used to kill a workplace ergonomics rule that had been a decade in the making.
So what’s at stake now?
In addition to the methane rule, there are the fuel-efficiency rules for trucks and formaldehyde, efficiency standards on manufactured housing, the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on selling antibacterial soaps, the overhaul of food labels, stronger consumer protections on prepaid debit cards, federal loan forgiveness for students who attended schools that shut down, a requirement that federal contractors must provide sick leave for their workers, and reducing workplace exposure to silica.
The Obama administration is also trying to complete new banking rules in the few weeks the president has left in office, which put them in the category of so-called “midnight regulations.” Those rules will be subject to congressional review. Since Donald Trump has long vowed that he will rewrite the existing, less-restrictive rule book, it seems likely all the current administration’s effort on banking rules will come to nought in January. But officials drafting the rules hope that some of what they produce will survive intact.
Besides rewriting banking rules, Trump has said he will cut federal regulations overall by 70 percent, a titanic and complex task that is frankly undoable even over two terms in office but nevertheless shows the frame of mind we’ll be faced with starting in January.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans sent a letter to every government agency Tuesday urging them to end all rule-making activity until Trump takes office:
The letter, sent by the House Republican committee chairmen and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, warns federal agencies against finalizing pending rules that may have “unintended consequences” for consumers and businesses.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy said that, following Barack Obama’s election in 2008, House Democrats, led by then-congressman and eventual White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, had made a similar request.
Just another of the many fronts on which the anti-Trumpism resistance will have to devote energy and time fighting.