Congress can stop Obama regulators on steriods. Read how!

[Elizabeth Baldwin Letchworth]

According to a George Washington University study  published in May of 2010, in the previous year, the Obama administration cranked out regulations as if regulators were on steroids! President Obama’s administration issued 16,200 regulations the previous year as compared to 28,400 in the period from April of 1996 through December 31, 2000. If this doesn’t get your jaw dropping, a 57% increase in the staffing and the federal budget monies devoted to developing and enforcing federal regulations should have you shaking your head.  Also, in order to get an accurate picture of regulators run- a-muck, you need to add to these 16,200 regulations, the 1000’s of regs included in the Financial Reform bill, the Food Safety Modernization bill and the Obama Health Care bill, all passed in 2010. Finally, a full picture of regulators on steroids can be plainly seen if you also add the final weeks in December of 2010, when Obama’s regulators continued to issue rules and vote on regulations that had been defeated or vigorously opposed in Congress.

Over the Christmas weekend, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services issued a new regulation that provides payments to doctors who conduct end of life counseling with their patients, the so called re-birth of “death panels.” If readers remember, these provisions were taken out of the Obama care bill during the negotiations with House and Senate in the early spring of 2010. Members of Congress objected because many believed this should be left up to families and not forced on us by our Federal Government. The President agreed to drop the “death panels” and thus the legislative language was removed before passage of the bill. Let’s also remember that when President Obama skirted the Senate confirmation process by recess- appointing his head to this CMS agency in July of 2010, Senators cried foul again and said the appointee, Administrator Donald Berwick, would resurrect death panels.

During Christmas week, on Dec. 21, 2010, the Federal Communication commission voted out a rule that allows them to write regulations that give control of the open Internet to the FCC. Our Federal Government, will now safeguard our use of the Internet, protecting us from Internet providers that have never shown any indication that they would restrict our access to the Internet. The FCC is now the protector or gatekeeper of consumer’s access. This regulation has been dubbed net neutrality.

These are just two of the latest moves by Obama’s regulators and need to be added to the massive list of other rules and regs that are being written on a weekly basis by our federal agencies.

Congress can and should start using the Congressional Review Act to stop this over-reach by the Obama Administration and wean regulators off these steroids they seem to be on.  Using the Congressional Review Act will do just that.  The CRA was designed back in 1996 to combat regulators during the Clinton Administration that had run a-muck when it came to OSHA regulations dealing with ergonomic s in the work place. The business community went nuts at this 1996 cost producing regulation, which prompted Congress to create a process by which regulations can be made null and void, even after they are already in place.

The Congressional Review Act works like this. First, all agencies must report to Congress a concise statement describing the rule and the effective date of the new regulation. Congress has 60 days to have at least one member of the House and Senate to introduce in the respective chambers, a joint resolution disapproving the rule. Even when agencies issue these rules during a Congressional adjournment, the act allows for timetables to kick-in allowing a disapproval resolution to be introduced when the Congress comes back from adjournment, even if it is a new Congress, like the one convening in Jan. 2011.  The joint resolution is then sent to the appropriate committee and timetables for debate and consideration now take over. Full Senate debate is required at a certain point and can’t be blocked or ignored by the Senate Majority Leader. Debate in the Senate is limited to 10 hours with no ability to alter the text. A simple majority vote is all that is required to pass the disapproval resolution in both the House and Senate. Assuming the Senate GOP can entice a few Senate Democrats to help them on the final vote, and Speaker Boehner can get his GOP majority in the House to pass a disapproval resolution, then the joint resolution is sent to the President for his approval or veto. This is where the rubber will meet the road!

 President Obama promised to remove “death panels” from Obama care when it was being debated in Congress.  Will the President keep his promise and sign the disapproval resolution, thereby once again making “death panels” a thing of the past? Or will POTUS veto the resolution, and prove to the American people that his word or bond means nothing when negotiating with Congress?

 Maybe we should remember the few rules and timetables involved in producing a resolution to disapprove of an agency regulation under the Congressional Review Act. This writer has a feeling the use of the Congressional Review Act will become commonplace in the 112^th Congress.

Stay tuned to see if Congress is forced to use the Congressional Review Act as a way to hold the President to his word on so many issues facing the 112^th Congress.

Elizabeth B. Letchworth is a retired, elected United States Senate Secretary for the Majority and Minority. Currently she is a senior legislative adviser for Covington & Burling, LLC and is the founder of GradeGov.com