By Harold Hutchison, Daily Caller News Foundation | February 04, 2025
Members of a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee have scheduled a Feb. 11 hearing to consider ways to limit the administrative state’s ability to impose new regulations.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 imposing a freeze on new regulations. House Republicans, meanwhile, say they plan to support legislation that would place additional controls on government regulations. Axon Enterprise CEO Rick Smith, entrepreneur Magatte Wade and Hoover Institution Research Fellow Dr. Patrick McLaughlin are scheduled to testify at the Feb. 11 hearing.
“The American people trust President Trump and Republicans to strengthen our country,” Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “That starts with transparency into government bureaucracy and cutting unnecessary red tape to make sure the American economy can thrive.”
The hearing, titled “Reining in the Administrative State: Regulatory and Administrative Law Reform,” will likely discuss HR 142, the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, introduced by Republican Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright made it clear that Congress, not unelected bureaucrats, make the law. But more must be done to check the unconstitutional overreach of the administrative state,” Republican Rep. Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust, told the DCNF. “Not only should we codify the Loper Bright decision, but we should ensure rules that exceed the agency’s statutory authority are narrowed or repealed. This hearing will give members an opportunity to make those determinations.”
The legislation would require both houses of Congress to approve “major rules,” defined as regulations with an effect of $100 million or more each year, through a joint resolution that the president of the United States would have to sign or veto.
Currently, under the Congressional Review Act, Congress can disapprove a regulation during a certain window of time, but the disapproval is subject to a presidential veto. President Joe Biden vetoed a bipartisan disapproval of one regulation targeting trucks in June 2023.
The Biden administration proposed new regulations in 2023 targeting stoves and other appliances using natural gas, citing a study that says that gas stoves account for 12.7% of asthma cases among children.
The Biden administration blocked efforts to start mining for copper and nickel near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota in January 2023, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency made a determination on Jan. 31, 2023 that would block the mining of 1.4 billion tons of copper, gold, molybdenum, silver and rhenium in Alaska in order to protect salmon.
The Biden administration — saying they needed to fight climate change — also pushed for the adoption of electric vehicles, including the imposition of fuel-efficiency regulations for light and medium vehicles and heavy-duty vehicles.
Harold Hutchison is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation
Original article link
