Undoing Trump's Work II

The Times has an article today on how the Democrats are planning to use the Congressional Review Act to undo Trump regulatory actions.  According to the article the Republicans are now within the period to which the Act applies so a new Congress controlled by the Democrats would be able to reverse any final rules published from here on to Jan. 19.

The piece quotes Sally Katzen as raising the issue of whether it's possible to reinstate the Obama regs which the Trump administration nullified using the CRA, but it doesn't explore it. I haven't looked at the actual wording of the act recently, but I wonder if the courts would uphold the ability of one Congress to bind a future Congress.

Undoing Trump's Work

Trump has made many changes in federal policy, issuing a lot of executive orders. Most recently, he's proposing to change the way the government does environmental policy.  There's already a lawsuit saying he's not following the Administrative Procedure Act. IMHO it's likely the policy won't be final by Jan 20, so a new Biden administration could withdraw it easily. My point here is actions like this are basically political campaign fodder, not realistic.  It's okay; the Obama administration did  much the same.  You spend 3.5 years hoping to do something,and you wake up and find you're out of time, but you might as well do it anyway--it will look good to your supporters and there's always the chance the new administration will carry on the work.

Other changes Trump has made are permanent, meaning a new administration will have to go through the rulemaking process to consider whether they want just to reverse the changes, or whether they want to take the occasion to make some modifications of their own.  I'm not sure whether a straight revocation of a final rule has a lower legal hurdle for justification or not--it's possible a new cost-benefit analysis would still be required.  Since Trump's people have changed the parameters for such analyses  the situation gets a bit more complicated.

Assuming Biden wins in November, watching the new administration navigate these hurdles will be rewarding.