The Congressional Review Act (CRA) is a law that was enacted by the United States Congress as subtitle E of the Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on March 29, 1996. The law empowers Congress to review, by means of an expedited legislative process, new federal regulations issued by government agencies and, by passage of a joint resolution, to overrule a regulation. Once a rule is thus repealed, the CRA also prohibits the reissuing of the rule in substantially the same form or the issuing of a new rule that is substantially the same "unless the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of the joint resolution disapproving the original rule." Congress has a window of time lasting 60 session days to disapprove of any given rule by simple-majority vote; otherwise, the rule will go into effect at the end of that period.
Before 2017, Congress successfully invoked the CRA only once to overturn a rule (in 2001). In January 2017, with a new Republican president, Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled 115th Congress began passing a series of disapproval resolutions to overturn a variety of rules issued under the Obama administration. Ultimately, 14 such resolutions repealing Obama administration rules were passed and signed into law; a fifteenth resolution was passed by the House but failed in the Senate. Because of the shortness of legislative sessions during the 114th Congress, the 115th Congress was able to target rules issued by the Obama administration as far back as June 2016.
Contents
Procedure
Use of the Congressional Review Act has increased because the Act provides special, fast-track parliamentary procedures that make it easier for Congress to pass a joint resolution of disapproval, particularly in the Senate, where a qualifying joint resolution cannot be filibustered.
The Act requires that before a rule can take effect, the agency promulgating the rule must submit a report (containing the rule, a concise general statement of the rule, and the rule’s proposed effective date) to each House of Congress and the Comptroller General. Each House then sends copies of the report to the Chairs and Ranking Members of committees with jurisdiction and prints notices of the report in the Congressional Record as executive communications.
The Act makes special procedures available for 60 days. In interpreting the starting date for that period, the House of Representatives focuses on the date that it received the report, while the Senate focuses on the date that the notice is published in the Congressional Record and the report is referred to committee. The later of either of those dates or the date on which the rule is published in the Federal Register (if the agency published rule there) then becomes the starting date for a period of 60 session days thereafter during which the Act's special parliamentary procedures apply. If the agency fails to publish the rule in the Federal Register and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determines that it is nonetheless a rule (as described below), then the starting date is the date on which a Senator publishes the GAO decision in the Congressional Record.
To qualify for expedited consideration in the Senate, a joint resolution of disapproval may not be introduced before the starting date. And a joint resolution of disapproval introduced after the 60 day period ends does not qualify for the Act's special procedures. The 60 day period counts calendar days, "excluding days either House of Congress is adjourned for more than 3 days during a session of Congress."
The joint resolution of disapproval must use only the words, “That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the ____ relating to ____, and such rule shall have no force or effect,” where the first blank is filled in with the agency and the second blank is filled with the title of the rule and either the Federal Register citation (if the agency published it there) or the Congressional Record citation (if GAO determined it to be a rule).
GAO's role
The law gives the Government Accountability Office (GAO), headed by the Comptroller General, a role in policing the statute.
The law requires that "Before a rule can take effect, the Federal agency promulgating such rule shall submit to each House of the Congress and to the Comptroller General a report . . . ."
The law requires that "On the date of the submission of the report . . . , the Federal agency promulgating the rule shall submit to the Comptroller General” further analysis, accounts of agency actions, and “any other relevant information or requirements under any other Act and any relevant Executive orders."
The law requires that "The Comptroller General shall provide a report on each major rule to the committees of jurisdiction in each House of the Congress by the end of 15 calendar days after the submission or publication date . . . . The report of the Comptroller General shall include an assessment of the agency’s compliance with procedural steps required . . . ."
The statute requires that “Federal agencies shall cooperate with the Comptroller General by providing information relevant to the Comptroller General’s report . . . ."
Pursuant to this statutory authorization, since Congress enacted the law in 1996, GAO has regularly evaluated whether administrative actions constitute "rules" under the law. This practice began when, on August 27, 1996, Senator Larry Craig, then Chairman of the Subcommittee on Forests and Public Lands Management of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, asked for GAO's views on whether a July 2 memorandum issued by the Secretary of Agriculture concerning the Emergency Salvage Timber Sale Program was a "rule" under the CRA.
When an agency does not submit an action as a rule under the law and GAO then determines that the agency's action is a "rule" under the law, the Senate Parliamentarian gives effect to GAO's position.
Before 2025, when GAO decided that an agency action was not a rule, the Senate did not consider any joint resolution of disapproval of any of those agency actions. In March 2025, the Congressional Research Service reviewed GAO legal opinions regarding the law and related action on joint resolutions of disapproval and found no instances of Congressional action after GAO decided that an agency action was not a rule. Notably, in 2014, Leader Mitch McConnell and 41 cosponsors introduced a joint resolution of disapproval of an Environmental Protection Agency action regarding Electrical Utility Generating Units, but GAO subsequently determined that the agency action was not a rule subject to the CRA. Senator McConnell and his cosponsors apparently deferred to that decision and did not attempt to advance the disapproval.
Use
Despite its passage in 1996, the Congressional Review Act was not used to send any resolutions of disapproval to the President's desk during the remainder of the Clinton administration. President George W. Bush signed the only resolution of disapproval sent to him by Congress. Congress passed five resolutions of disapproval during the presidency of Barack Obama, but he vetoed all of them.
In the first four months of his term, President Donald Trump signed 14 resolutions of disapproval into law. At the White House, Andrew Bremberg, Marc Short, and Rick Dearborn coordinated with aides of Leader Mitch McConnell to use the CRA, creating an Excel spreadsheet of target regulations, eventually being able to eliminate over twice as many as they had anticipated. The later enactment in November 2017 of H.J. Res. 111 was notable for being the first time that a president signed a CRA resolution against a regulation issued during his own administration.
Successful uses
The following is a complete list of successful uses of the CRA, as of May 9, 2025:
The following joint resolutions have been passed by the House of Representatives in the 119th Congress and are awaiting consideration by the Senate.
The following joint resolutions have been passed by the Senate in the 119th Congress and are awaiting consideration by the House.
Unsuccessful attempts
The following is a complete list of joint resolutions under the Congressional Review Act that were vetoed by the president after having been passed by both houses of Congress and were not able to have the vetos overridden:
Expanded possibilities
The CRA emerged as an attractive tool in the 115th Congress because it provides one of the few avenues for Senate action that avoids the ordinary 60-vote cloture requirement. As a result, several new theories about how to expand the reach and power of the CRA have been developed.
With regard to previously unsubmitted regulations
One provision of the CRA is its stipulation that rules do not go into effect until after they have been submitted to Congress. Since many rules over the last 20 years have never been submitted to Congress, some legal scholars have argued that the rules are not actually in effect and may still be eligible to be overturned even if they were passed many years ago. According to arguments made by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), that could be accomplished in one of three ways: (1) a rule could be submitted to Congress now by the White House and then repealed by a joint resolution under the CRA, (2) the White House could publish notice that a rule not in effect is being withdrawn or abandoned, or (3) a rule could be thrown out by a court on the grounds that it was never in effect.
A variation on the idea was pursued later in the 115th Congress by Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA), who was looking for additional deregulatory pathways. Toomey has criticized government regulators for "regulat[ing] by guidance rather than through the process they're supposed to use, which is the Administrative Procedure Act" and has argued that an official determination that a particular piece of guidance "rises to the significance of being a rule" would mean that "from that moment the clock starts on the CRA opportunity". In response to a request from Toomey for a determination on whether a 2013 auto-lending guidance rule issued by the CFPB qualified as a "rule" under the terms of the CRA, GAO issued an opinion on December 5, 2017, saying that it did, thus launching the 60-day CRA window according to the opinion of the Senate parliamentarian. Subsequently, S.J. Res. 57 was introduced on March 22, 2018, to repeal the CFPB rule, an effort that has been described as a "trial balloon" and, if successful, would open the door to a greatly-expanded application of the CRA to various "rules" issued over the last few decades. Other possible applications are also being explored, including a 2016 plan from the Bureau of Land Management, which the GAO confirmed was a rule for CRA purposes in response to a request from Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). On the other hand, the success of S.J. Res. 57 could prove to be a Pandora's box, setting a dangerous precedent and calling into question the legitimacy of many other rules in a way could create a climate of uncertainty and jeopardy for those who have been following or relying on them. S.J. Res. 57 was signed into law on May 21, 2018.
With regard to preemptive regulations
Another possible avenue for expanding the power of the CRA concerns its prohibition against any regulation being passed if it is "substantially similar" to one already repealed under the CRA without explicit Congressional approval. Some Republicans have therefore suggested that the Trump administration could preemptively introduce liberal regulations with the intention of having them immediately repealed under the CRA and thereby preventing a future Democratic administration from issuing substantially similar regulations.
REINS Act
Regularly since 2009, Members of Congress have introduced in the House and the Senate versions of the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act—the REINS Act—a fast-track procedure similar to the Congressional Review Act to review regulations. In five separate Congresses, the House of Representatives passed versions of the bill that died in the Senate. In 2017, a Senate committee reported a version of the bill for the first time. The fiscal year 2025 budget resolution contained a policy statement calling for Congress "to enact legislation through reconciliation that strengthens Congress, scales back Federal regulations, limits future bureaucratic red tape, and unleashes economic growth, such as the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act," but the Senate Parliamentarian determined that a version of the REINS Act violated the Senate's Byrd Rule, which limits what Senators can include in budget reconciliation measures.
The REINS Act would establish a congressional approval process for all major rules, so that no proposed major rule could take effect unless Congress affirmatively approved. The bill would define a major rule as a rule that would likely (1) affect the economy by $100 million or more a year; (2) cause a major increase in costs or prices for consumers, industries, government, or regions; or (3) significantly affect competition, employment, investment, productivity, innovation, or the ability of U.S. businesses to compete with foreign competitors.
Repeal proposal
On May 16, 2017, Senators Cory Booker and Tom Udall introduced S. 1140, a bill to repeal the Congressional Review Act; the bill received no action.