This week, the Republican-controlled Senate aims to dismantle the former Biden administration’s move giving California room to implement a green agenda for cars across the country, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) announced on Tuesday.
During remarks on the Senate floor, Thune said the upper chamber will take up Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions to overturn Clean Air Act preemption waivers the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted to California, which allowed it to proceed with a plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.
The waivers allowed California “to dictate emissions standards for the whole country – effectively imposing a nationwide electric vehicle mandate,” said Thune, who called the state’s rules an “improper expansion of a limited Clean Air Act authority and would endanger consumers, our economy, and our nation’s energy supply.”
A key conflict is whether the CRA, which allows bypassing a filibuster to undo regulations, applies to the waivers. Both the Senate parliamentarian and Government Accountability Office (GAO) have assessed the waivers are not rules that qualify.
But the Senate is poised to press forward, as Thune contended the EPA submitted the waivers as rules. He also noted the GOP-led House already voted to pass a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval with the support of 35 Democrats, and did so “without objection from the House parliamentarian.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), the top Democrat for the Committee on Rules and Administration and a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, declared in a statement that he was placing a hold on EPA nominees until Republicans back off and warned of future consequences if the GOP refuses to relent.
“None of these actions are rules, which is why they’ve never been submitted to Congress as rules,” Padilla said. “But if my Republican colleagues open this door and overturn the Parliamentarian’s wise safeguards on this type of abuse, there would be no practical limit, and the Senate could be forced to vote repeatedly on such matters that are clearly not ‘rules’ notwithstanding the plain language of the CRA.”
Thune suggested there will soon be repercussions for GAO, which bills itself as being an independent and non-partisan agency that “works for” Congress, because of the stance it took on the CRA in the California waiver debate.
“It is true that we are facing something of a novel situation,” Thune said. “Because for the first time ever, the Government Accountability Office has decided to insert itself into the process and affirmatively declare that an agency rule submitted to Congress as a rule is not a rule. It’s an extraordinary deviation from precedent for an agency that should be defending Congress’ power instead of constraining it.”
He added: “And frankly … I think we need to act to ensure that this intrusion into the Congressional Review Act process doesn’t become a habit, and that the Senate doesn’t end up transferring its decision-making power on CRA resolutions to the Government Accountability Office. That’s why this week I intend to bring the question of GAO’s unprecedented interference to the floor.”
