Sponsors (9)
The bill forces periodic pruning and clearer scoping of federal regulations to reduce burdens and litigation risk, but does so by creating potential regulatory instability, narrowing covered protections, and limiting private enforcement — shifting power and accountability toward agencies and the executive branch.
Federal agencies (DOE, BLM, BOEM, BSEE, OSMRE, FERC and others) get clearer, narrower definitions of which statutes and rule provisions the Act covers and explicitly retain their existing legal authorities, reducing immediate legal ambiguity and lowering federal litigation risk.
Small businesses and taxpayers may face lower compliance costs over time because agencies are required to periodically review and remove outdated or burdensome regulations, and 'net deregulatory' rules can be expedited for longer effect.
Agencies must solicit public comment before extending rules, creating more formal opportunities for public, state, and local input into whether specific regulations should continue.
Many existing regulations would automatically expire within a year unless reauthorized, creating widespread legal uncertainty for businesses, state and local governments, and the public about which rules will remain in force.
Short automatic sunsets and narrow statutory carve-outs risk removing or exempting important health, safety, and environmental protections if agencies fail to complete timely reviews and extensions.
The Act bars private lawsuits to enforce its provisions and concentrates reauthorization and extension power within agency leaders and OMB, reducing private accountability and increasing the risk of uneven or unchecked executive decisionmaking.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Introduced February 17, 2026 by Craig A. Goldman · Last progress February 17, 2026
Creates an automatic, time-limited lifecycle for many federal energy and related natural-resource regulations by requiring covered agencies to set expiration dates on existing and future rules. Existing covered regulations must be amended to expire one year after the amendment’s effective date; regulations issued after enactment must expire within five years unless an agency head certifies a net deregulatory effect. Agencies can extend expirations in up-to-5-year increments only after public comment and a benefits/costs determination (unless the change is certified deregulatory). If an expiration is not timely extended, the regulation ceases to have effect and must be removed from the Code of Federal Regulations.