CRA – not tired of winning

This popped up on a couple of different sources at about the same time, not sure who was first. Likely the WSJ, as this ZeroHedge post cites it. Short version: when congress passes a law and the president signs it, it will often have an outline of what’s to be done, and it directs the appropriate agencies involved to write up the implementing regulations and guidelines. A three page law might have hundreds of pages of legalese added to the Federal Register. Heck, the entire edifice built on “title IX” is standing on a single sentence! Anyway, a law passed in 1996 called the Congressional Review Act requires that after the regulations are written they have to send a report to congress, where they must be voted up or down by simple majority vote within 60 days. Congress was trying to keep an out-of-control agency from getting too hog wild on the details that were delegated to them.

The clock stars ticking when the regulations are published, or when the report gets sent to congress, whichever is later.

Well, it seems that the last administration was a tad sloppy on their paperwork. They rarely sent a report to congress. Trump can direct any agency under his command (effectively all of them) to send a report to congress if they have not done so already. If it gets voted down, the law is on hold until they can put together regs that are acceptable to congress, and the next attempt at reg-writing cannot be to simply re-submit essentially the same thing again. So a whole bunch of junk passed in the last 8 years might be, ah, revisited.

Suddenly Trump’s statements about reducing regulation hugely doesn’t sound so absurd.

Nope, not tired of winning yet.

Share

6 thoughts on “CRA – not tired of winning

  1. obama never did have much respect for law.

    very interesting post. i wonder where it will lead. especially regarding the shenanigans he was up to in the last month of his term of service.

    reversals of field? interesting.

  2. I believe the average was 5 pages of regulations for every page of law according to Rep. J.D. Haywood back in the 90’s. If you then add regulation that was not voted for by Congress ( EPA attempting to add ponds to the Clean Water Act) I’m sure the page increase dramatically.

    An interesting fact was when Rep. Haywood first tried to pass his review act he could not get a single co-sponsor to sign on to the bill.

    • Yeah, it was not real popular. BUT: the God-Emperor has show that he’s willing and able to call people out, to name-and-shame, and he holds a grudge when appropriate. He’s extremely up-tempo on the attack. He’ll likely pick and choose which laws and regulations he wants to attack (or rather, he’s got pros doing it for him), and direct the agency to send the report, and then go to the media and blame Congress for failure to strike down onerous regulations if they don’t vote, or else saying “it’s the dysfunctional congress that approved all these legal shackles, I’m doing what I can for the little guy… Hey, congressman, it sure would be a shame if you got primaried because regulations you voted to approve of screwed over people in your district, wouldn’t it?”
      He’ll have congress eating out of his hand very soon, and he’ll be triggering the media so often with his mega-aggressions that they’ll start supporting him just to soothe their amygdala freakout.
      Odds of adding the God-Emperor’s mug to Mt Rushmore within my lifetime are now above 25%.

    • 5 pages? It’s hard to imagine that was within an order of magnitude of correct. The Federal Register runs hundreds of pages every day and has for a long time. The old saw “ignorance of the law is no excuse” has long ago been turned into nonsense; as matters stand now, there isn’t a single person in the country who knows the law.

      • The old saw “ignorance of the law is no excuse” has long ago been turned into nonsense; as matters stand now, there isn’t a single person in the country who knows the law.

        The new saw: “Ignorance of the law is unavoidable.”

        • Yes. Which means that a lot of people accused of breaking obscure laws — like laws restricting what you can do with the mud puddle in your back yard — have a very solid argument to use in front of the jury.

Comments are closed.