“For too long, unelected bureaucrats have tried to take on the job of lawmakers by enforcing regulations that burden millions of people’s lives. My BLOCK Act gives Congress the authority to exercise checks and balances over agencies on behalf of Americans and keeps the administrative state at bay.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today introduced the Bureaucratic Limitation and Overreach Control (BLOCK) Act to establish guardrails for executive agencies’ major rulemaking.
The bill would lower the economic impact requirements of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) for major rules from $100 million to $50 million per year. Rules that the Comptroller General predicts meet or exceed the threshold would require a joint resolution of approval by Congress before the they could go into effect.
“For too long, unelected bureaucrats have tried to take on the job of lawmakers by enforcing regulations that burden millions of people’s lives. My BLOCK Act gives Congress the authority to exercise checks and balances over agencies on behalf of Americans and keeps the administrative state at bay,” said Kennedy.
- The BLOCK Act would permit a major rule to go into effect if the president determined that it is necessary for national security or disaster response but would still require Congressional approval within 15 session days. The rule would become invalid if a joint resolution of approval had not passed within the timeframe.
- Six months after the bill becomes law, every federal agency would have to submit 20% of the major rules that it currently had in effect to Congress for approval. Following that six-month period, those agencies would have to submit another 20% of their major rules for congressional approval annually. Within five years of the bill’s enactment, Congress would have had the opportunity to approve or disapprove all major rules that were in effect when the BLOCK Act became law.
- The BLOCK Act would allow minor rules, which include those that the Comptroller General predicts will have an economic impact of less than $50 million, to go into effect upon publication in the Federal Register. Congress would still have the authority to pass a joint resolution of disapproval under the CRA to reverse minor rules that an agency had published.
The full bill text is available here.