Senate Republicans Need to Pull Back on the REINS in Reconciliation
By Katie Tracy
A faction of Republican Senators, including Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY), are seeking to wholesale dismantle public safeguards by slipping a massive antiregulatory bill called the “REINS” Act into the budget reconciliation package before Senate passage, which could happen as soon as this month. Future rules like those that ensure airplanes don’t crash, banks don’t commit fraud, and people are safe in the workplace would be nearly impossible to put in place.
The Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act would impose an impractical hurdle on agencies’ ability to issue new economically significant safeguards, requiring both House and Senate approval within a short window (roughly 60 days, depending on the bill version) before the new rule could go into effect. Without approval, a rule could not move forward and Congress would be barred from attempting approval again until the next congressional session. In short, lawmakers who want to kill a rule can succeed by simply gumming up the legislative process for a couple months.
And the intent of the REINS Act and its supporters is clearly to obstruct the process for the benefit of billionaires, big businesses, and corporate campaign contributors. After all, agencies are already restricted on the rules they can implement. For example, a statute passed by Congress and signed into law by the President must give clear authority to an agency to develop new rules. If an agency oversteps its authority, Congress can already pass a law to eliminate or limit a rule. And courts can also invalidate rules if they find that an agency has overstepped.
The REINS Act does nothing to improve the process by which agencies put in place commonsense safeguards that address emerging risks, such as artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, or climate change. The bill simply creates new hurdles, mucking up the regulatory process on behalf of polluters, cheats, and fraudsters. By subjecting all economically significant rules to a highly politicized and dysfunctional legislative approval system, the law would ensure even the most critical or popular rules would be unlikely to survive.
Including this language in the reconciliation bill means it could pass with a simple majority vote, and it would become law after agreement by the House and the President’s signature. But there is one thing that could keep this dangerous language out of the reconciliation bill currently being drafted in the Senate. Language only qualifies for inclusion in a bill using the special reconciliation process if it has a budgetary purpose, according to the Senate’s own rules (the “Byrd” rule). The REINS Act has no budgetary purpose and shouldn’t pass the Byrd rule.
Yet, there’s no guarantee Senate Republicans will follow the Byrd rule. Just last month, Senate Republicans violated their own rules and overruled their neutral referee, the parliamentarian. They did this to eliminate emissions waivers that the Environmental Protection Agency issued to California so that it can set stronger clean air standards than the federal government. While Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) says his party won’t overrule the parliamentarian again, his words are no longer reliable because he already allowed the Senate to break its own rules.
The House version of the reconciliation bill contained REINS Act language right up until passage—coupled with several other anti-regulatory proposals. Senators Lee and Paul have publicly announced that they are working to try to reinsert the REINS Act into the Senate bill before the House votes on it again.
The best chance of keeping this disastrous language out of the reconciliation bill is for moderate Republicans to oppose its inclusion and to call on their colleagues to act in the best interests of their constituents, not their corporate donors.
Americans support smart, sensible public protections that keep them safe, guarantee a bright future for their children, and allow their small businesses to thrive. Efforts to kill valued public safeguards by including the REINS Act in the reconciliation bill must be stopped, for the benefit of all Americans.