Regulation aficionados can’t refute CRA’s legality
Over at Pacific Legal Foundation’s Liberty Blog, attorney Tony Francois recently wrote a response to critics on the Congressional Review Act. A post on a website quoted legal professors calling the use of the CRA “ill advised,” but these professors couldn’t offer a legal argument against the use of the CRA.
Francois writes:
The article makes one major error in its explanation of the Congressional Review Act: it says that it is limited to review of “economically significant regulations.” But a cursory examination of the text of the law shows that the Act requires all rules (defined to include informal policy guidance in addition to formal notice and comment regulations), major or not, be submitted to Congress before they can take effect.
Aside from this inaccuracy, the article is telling for its lack of legal argument against the obligation of agencies to submit even their old and informal rules to Congress, and Congress’ power to disapprove them under the Act. That point is conceded.
Lacking legal argument, the article advances its argument with a creepy theme: the Congressional Review Act is a knife in the back of health and safety protection, wielded by psychotic members of congress whose twisted purpose in life is to destroy the only thing that protects people from the horrors of daily life: the administrative state. The article even features not one but two Norman Bates themed images.
When all the other side can muster is cartoonish rhetoric and, well, cartoons, you known you are winning the argument.
Mr. Francois’s full post can be read at PLF’s Liberty Blog.
