Sneaky Little REINS Act
How a radical piece of legislation found its way into budget reconciliation
By Elizabeth Skerry
One of the most radical pieces of legislation you probably haven’t heard of has the chance to become law through a rather wonky Congressional process called budget reconciliation.
The legislation in question? The Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act (H.R. 142).
Republicans have snuck language evoking the REINS Act into the text of the latest House and Senate versions of their budget resolutions meant to provide the framework for one larger bill that will be passed via the “reconciliation” process. This is problematic, as reconciliation bills cannot be stopped with a filibuster in the Senate and instead require just a simple majority to pass (51 votes in the Senate, 218 votes in the House). Given the current makeup of Congress (53 Republican Senators and 218 Republican Representatives), it is very likely that the bill that is ultimately advanced via reconciliation will pass in both chambers on a party-line vote and be signed into law by President Trump.
What does the REINS Act do? The REINS Act is one of the most radical threats in generations to our government’s ability to protect the public from harm. The bill’s clear aim is to stop the implementation of critical new public health and safety safeguards, financial reforms, and worker protections — making industry even less accountable to the public. Rather than help make the American public safer and better off, it would benefit only those corporations that seek to rig the system in their favor and evade safety standards.
Under the REINS Act, Congress would be required to affirmatively approve rules with a large economic impact. This means the legislature would have the ability to “kill” a major rule if one house voted against it, which is, in practice, an unconstitutional legislative veto. Further, this process would be completely unworkable, and flying in the face of the reality of the legislative process. Congress already increasingly struggles to pass important new laws, including must-pass bills that accomplish basic functions like funding the government. If the REINS Act were to pass, it is all but certain that most, if not all, new major rules would be blocked due to Congressional dysfunction.
What is currently in the budget resolutions is not exactly the REINS Act, as neither the House nor the Senate version contain the text of the bill. Nevertheless, these resolutions certainly call the bill to mind. The House version names the bill outright. The Senate version calls for “reducing burdensome and costly Federal Government regulations by passing legislation focused on government deregulation.”
Furthermore, there are limitations as to what can be included in reconciliation that could possibly prevent something that looks a lot like the REINS Act from ultimately being included. This is because reconciliation bills must directly affect the federal budget, not enact policy changes that only incidentally affect it. The “Byrd Rule” sets up a process by which provisions in a reconciliation bill can be stripped out if they violate these or other prohibitions, as the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center explains.
Since the REINS Act does not, for instance, change expenditures or revenues in the federal budget, it very likely does not meet the Byrd Rule’s requirements and could possibly be excluded from a reconciliation bill if Congress does try to include it in the final bill. But this presumption does not make what the House and Senate Republicans are attempting to do any less concerning.
Republicans have long expressed support for the REINS Act. It is one of those “zombie bills” that rises from the crypt and is reintroduced every Congress. More recently, the bill has been reintroduced with an accompanying hearing that touts the bill as the solution to reforming our federal regulatory process and, in their words, “reining in the administrative state.” Public Citizen has submitted written testimony in opposition to the REINS Act and these counterproductive and regressive hearings in recent years. Republicans continue to focus their time, energy, and taxpayer dollars on criticizing our regulatory system instead of ensuring that our regulatory system keeps the public safe.
The attempt to include something that evokes the REINS Act in reconciliation is another signal from Republicans in Congress that they are serious about making this radical, dangerous, and unconstitutional bill the law of the land in any way they can. Additionally, the DOGE deregulatory agenda set by Elon Musk and President Trump marks a scary age of those in power boldly putting corporate profits over public safety. What’s even scarier is that Russell Vought, the newly confirmed Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget who was a key architect of Project 2025, advocated for the REINS Act in a chapter he wrote in Project 2025. Vought now helms the very office that is responsible for oversight of the federal rulemaking process.
The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards (CSS), a coalition of over 200 diverse labor, consumer, public health, food safety, financial reform, faith, environmental, and scientific integrity groups representing millions of Americans and that Public Citizen co-chairs, has sent many letters to Congress over the years opposing the REINS Act, and has been successful in preventing this dangerous bill from becoming law.
What can you do about this? Call your Senators and Representatives and tell them to oppose the reconciliation bill, especially if it includes the REINS Act.
If anything needs to be “reined in,” it’s the current attack led by Trump and Elon Musk on the commonsense safeguards that keep us all healthy and safe. Public Citizen continues to fight back.