Republicans in Washington — having funded the government for six months, passed their tax law, and failed to repeal Obamacare — have an opening ahead of the 2018 midterm elections for another top priority: deregulating the administrative state.
They appear to have found a clever tool to achieve that goal: a novel use of the Congressional Review Act, the 1996 law that gives Congress extensive power to invalidate rules established by federal agencies and, in doing so, making it more difficult for any future administrations to resurrect the policies that lawmakers have struck down.
Republicans already worked overtime to undo the Obama administration's last-minute regulations during the first 60 legislative days of the Trump administration. That was under the more conventional understanding of the CRA, which states that Congress has 60 days after a rule takes effect to pass a resolution disapproving it.
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