Legislative Moves
Meadows, elected this month to succeed Jim Jordan as House Freedom Caucus chairman, assumed his new role last week in part on a platform of going after regulations aggressively.
"For us it is looking at the whole regulatory reform issue," Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said in a recent interview. "How do we re-balance that regulatory process where we actually allow the legislative branch determine policy."
The Freedom Caucus will look to back up Trump’s regulatory pen with a bill next year to change the regulatory review process to require stricter analysis of the costs of regulations. he said. The group also wants legislation to limit future administrations from stretching the intent of the law when writing follow-up regulations, something Republicans allege Obama did in regulating greenhouse gases.
While some of the executive orders Obama issued can be quickly reversed, others will need to undergo the time consuming federal rule-making process. Congress can reverse the most recent regulations with simple majority votes in the House and Senate using the Congressional Review Act.
Democrats are already vowing to fight the Freedom Caucus effort.
“Rolling back these regulations would be a major mistake by President-elect Trump and House Republicans. From leveling the playing field and protecting the most vulnerable Americans, to giving our children an opportunity to grow up healthy and strong, these regulations are aimed at helping working families." Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut said in an e-mailed comment. "I will do everything that I can to fight attempts to undo our work.”
Republicans have tried in vain to target most of the regulations in recent spending bills, only to see policy provisions stripped out under the threat of an Obama veto.
If Trump acts on many of the regulations himself and takes the policy fights off the table, the job of passing the next round of spending bills in April could be easier, Representative Tom Cole, a Republican on the spending panel, said last week.