Sponsors (94)
This bill increases transparency and fiscal consistency around major regulations by shifting significant approval and scoring responsibilities toward Congress and scorekeepers, but it risks slowing and politicizing rulemaking, creating budget distortions and administrative uncertainty that could raise costs or delay protections for Americans.
Who: All Americans (taxpayers) and congressional oversight bodies. What: Major executive regulatory actions would become more visible and subject to direct Congressional approval, increasing transparency and political accountability for significant rules.
Who: Taxpayers, state and local governments, and Congress (budget offices). What: CBO and budget scorekeepers would treat rules subject to disapproval as producing budget effects and provide clearer, forward-looking scoring guidance, improving consistency and helping appropriations planning.
Who: Congress and federal oversight bodies (and indirectly taxpayers and businesses). What: Agencies would get clearer guidance on estimating budget authority, outlays, and receipts tied to rules in the disapproval process, reducing scoring uncertainty for rule-related fiscal effects.
Who: Taxpayers and vulnerable populations. What: Requiring Congressional votes on major regulations could slow or delay rulemaking, postponing protections, benefits, or regulatory responses that depend on timely agency action.
Who: Taxpayers, regulated entities, and agency experts. What: Shifting approval of technical rulemaking to Congress risks politicizing decisions that are often technical or expert-driven, making outcomes more dependent on legislative politics than agency expertise.
Who: Federal agencies and taxpayers. What: Uncertainty about how the Congressional Review Act and the new processes will apply could delay agency rulemaking, impose administrative and compliance costs, and require agencies to await reinterpretation before finalizing rules.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Introduced January 3, 2025 by Kat Cammack · Last progress January 3, 2025
Requires Congress to approve or disapprove certain executive-branch regulations, changes how those rules are treated for federal budget scoring, and orders a Government Accountability Office study counting rules and estimating their economic cost. It also replaces the text of the law that governs congressional review of agency rulemaking, but the provided text does not include the substantive replacement language. Does not appropriate new funds. Includes a one-year deadline for GAO to report on the number and cost of rules and changes budget scoring assumptions so rules subject to the congressional disapproval process are treated as effective for budget purposes unless Congress disapproves them.