Congressional Review Act Tracker Methodology
By Elizabeth Skerry
The rules listed in Public Citizen’s Congressional Review Act tracker were selected by the following methodology: First, we identified the entire universe of rules and guidance that may be subject to the CRA, relying on the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions published by the Regulatory Information Service Center and the Federal Register. We then pared down that list of thousands – eliminating many small or noncontroversial rules that are very unlikely to be subject to meaningful CRA challenge. To reach a final list, we applied a set of objective and subjective factors: whether a rule is a “major rule,” with an annual economic impact of $100 million or more; whether a rule is included in an agency’s regulatory plan, meaning it is important to its regulatory goals; and an assessment based on history and public statements about whether Republican members of Congress are likely to consider a rule controversial and worthy of attack.
What does it take to make a CRA tracker, and why did Public Citizen make one? If you’re reading this, you probably found Public Citizen’s CRA tracker containing rules that are the most likely targets for Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions of disapproval in the 119th Congress beginning in January 2025, and want to learn more about the methodology and rationale behind it.
The list of rules included in this tracker took months to curate. This past spring, using the Fall 2023 Unified Agenda, which contains all regulations federal agencies aim to prioritize and finalize, we identified thousands of regulations that could potentially be subject to repeal through the CRA. Through the use of the online Unified Agenda’s advanced search function, we performed various search combinations and filtered searches to generate a universe of regulations that could be vulnerable to the CRA down the line.
Most of the rules we pulled were major rules, meaning rules that have an annual economic impact of $100 million or more. Major rules are also most likely to be rules that protect the public, such as those dictating clean air and clean water standards and consumer protections. We looked at major rules and non-major rules in the final rulemaking stage, as those are rules most likely to be finalized before the end of 2024. Additionally, we looked at major rules in the regulatory plan, as those are major rules an agency has identified as important to its regulatory goals and are thus ripe for a CRA challenge due to their higher cost to industry and content. Finally, we looked at non-major rules in the regulatory plan, as those are rules that do not have a major economic impact yet are rules an agency has identified as important to its regulatory goals and are therefore ripe for a CRA challenge based on content.
After completing this initial exercise of identifying the universe of rules, we wanted to further analyze and monitor, we pared this list of thousands of regulations down to just 136 regulations. This was accomplished through a combination of art and science. Using our best judgment, we narrowed the list down to the rules we believed were most at risk due to being perceived by Republicans in Congress and corporations as “woke,” too tough on industry, or somehow controversial.
We stepped away from our analysis for a few months and returned to it with fresh eyes in the wake of the election (it typically takes a “trifecta,” meaning both houses of Congress and the presidency controlled by the same party, for CRA challenges to pass, which will be the case next Congress). At this point, the Congressional Research Service had predicted the lookback period to begin on August 1, 2024, the day on or after which any finalized regulations would be subject to the CRA. To further pare down our list, we enlisted the advice and expertise of individuals at partner organizations and cross-checked our prior work with the Spring 2024 Unified Agenda and the Federal Register (the Federal Register contains, among other things, all finalized regulations that are in effect) to ensure rules hadn’t been finalized prior to August 1. Any rules that were finalized before August 1 were removed from our list. We also added rules that we may have missed during our initial search in the spring of thousands of regulations.
Update: Public Citizen confirmed on January 9, 2025 that the Congressional Review Act (CRA) lookback period began on August 16, 2024, in contrast with earlier reports that estimated the cutoff date to be August 1. The tracker has been updated to remove rules finalized before August 16.
This final process brought us to the list you see today. While most of the rules on this tracker are major rules, there are non-major rules on the list too, as there was a subjective element to this process where we used our best judgment. It wasn’t a strict science. Intuition and identifying patterns in the current CRA challenges in the current 118th Congress and under President Trump’s first term played a huge role as well. If you would like to see a complete list of over 1,000 rules hypothetically subject to the CRA, please see this interactive dashboard by the GW Regulatory Studies Center. Be advised that this longer list contains many non-major rules and guidance documents that we excluded as we believe they are not serious CRA targets.
So why does all of this matter? We put out the tracker so people know what is at stake when corporations push Republicans to use the CRA to take away the public’s rights and protections. That is why education on this issue is critical. It’s important to pull back the curtain on the Congressional Review Act and show people how overturning these rules will affect them and is not what they’ve elected their representatives to do. We believe once people realize what is really happening, attempts to overturn rules using the CRA will be deeply unpopular. (There’s a Wicked analogy in there somewhere, if you care to find it.) The rules contained in this tracker, if repealed, would negatively affect Americans lives and livelihoods. We are putting lawmakers on notice.