GianCarlo Canaparo, Paul J. Larkin
Introduction
Just as the Russian czars ruled by ukases, President Joe Biden governed by regulation. Rather than work with Congress to pass laws, Biden kicked federal agencies into overdrive, imposing $1.8 trillion in total regulatory costs on the country in four years—the highest regulatory costs imposed by any Administration in American history.REF To put this number in perspective, the second-place figure, imposed by Barack Obama over eight years, was $493.6 billion.REF That is only 27 percent of the costs that Biden imposed in half the time. In Biden’s last year in office alone, his bureaucrats published 107,262 pages in the Federal Register, the largest number in U.S. history.REF Those pages contained 3,248 rules.REF In Biden’s last three weeks in office, his Administration published 7,641 pages in the Federal Register generated by 243 new rules, 38 of which were published after Donald Trump was sworn in as President.REF
Biden’s regulatory blitz allowed him to impose his policies on the country without seeking compromise and without obtaining the democratic legitimacy that comes from it. One can understand why an unprincipled President might succumb to that temptation despite its obvious downsides, which include undermining the deliberative and consensus-forming process of representative lawmaking. But even the most unscrupulous President ought not to be blind to another downside of unilateral rulemaking: its lack of staying power. What one President builds with executive orders, another can tear down with his own.
Congress can also join the demolition thanks to a law called the Congressional Review Act (CRA).REF The CRA allows Congress, by simple majority vote in both houses and without the possibility of a Senate filibuster, to nullify federal rules within a set period after they are published and submitted to Congress (or, if a rule has not been submitted to Congress, at any time).REF There are three key benefits of CRA nullification over rescission by a subsequent President. » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/report/prime-targets-congressional-review-act-nullification