Congressional Review Act

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) is a law that was enacted by the United States Congress under House Speaker Newt Gingrich as Section 251 of the Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996 (Pub.L. 104–121) and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on March 29, 1996. The law empowers Congress to review, by means of an expedited legislative process, new federal regulations issued by government agencies and, by passage of a joint resolution, to overrule a regulation. Once a rule is thus repealed, the CRA also prohibits the reissuing of the rule in substantially the same form or the issuing of a new rule that is substantially the same "unless the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of the joint resolution disapproving the original rule" (5 U.S. Code § 801(b)(2)). Congress has a window of time lasting 60 legislative days (i.e., days that Congress is actually in session, rather than simple calendar days) to disapprove of any given rule by simple majority vote; otherwise, the rule will go into effect at the end of this period.

Prior to 2017, the CRA had only been successfully invoked once to overturn a rule (in 2001; see below). In January 2017, however, with a new Republican president, the Republican-controlled 115th Congress began passing a series of disapproval resolutions to overturn a variety of rules issued under the Obama administration. Ultimately, fourteen of these resolutions were passed and signed into law; a fifteenth resolution was passed by the House but failed in the Senate. Because of the shortness of legislative sessions during the 114th Congress, the 115th Congress was able to target rules passed by the Obama administration as far back as May 2016.

On May 16, 2017, Senators Cory Booker and Tom Udall introduced S. 1140, a bill to repeal the Congressional Review Act.

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