Senate Democrats' delaying tactics against many of President Trump's Cabinet nominations aren't just causing Republicans headaches, they're also working to save some of President Obama's last-minute "midnight" regulations.
Obama issued a stunning 145 regulations between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Republicans are working to repeal a bunch of them using a streamlined process provided in a little-used 20-year-old law called the Congressional Review Act, or CRA.
The CRA law gives Congress the power to rescind any unwelcome late regulation from an outgoing president through a simple majority vote in both chambers of Congress. But it also comes with time constraints. Even under the law's expedited House and Senate procedures, it only allows resolutions to come up at most for the first 60 legislative days after the regulation was published in the Federal Register.
The law also only allows for consideration of one regulation at a time, and the House and Senate rules require hours of equal debate time for opponents and proponents of the regulations. In the Senate, floor time is at a premium, especially with Cabinet nominations the main priority in the early few weeks of the year.
Frustrated Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to delay and obstruct Trump's nominees to an unprecedented degree, without any real impact because GOP senators have the votes to confirm the nominees themselves.
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01.14.2025