Obama Might Be Able to Overturn Bush’s Environmental Measures, After All

President Bush has been all too eager to use his last few months in office to get in as many favors for industry buddies as he can. He’s been pushing forth measures left and right that compromise our water quality, open national parks to destructive drilling and invade the habitats of endangered species. It’s been looking as though Bush’s final desperate moves would be difficult for Obama to quickly reverse, leading many conservationists to feel as if years of work have been lost. But, Congressional Democrats might just have found a way to roll back Bush’s midnight regulations, including ones that have already taken effect.

From Politico:

“Fortunately, [the White House] made a mistake,” said a top Senate Democratic aide.

Last May, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten instructed federal agency heads to make sure any new regulations were finalized by Nov. 1. The memo didn’t spell it out, but the thinking behind the directive was obvious. As Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute put it: “We’re not going to make the same mistakes the Clinton administration did.”

President Bill Clinton finalized regulations within 60 days of the 2001 inauguration, meaning Bush could come in and easily reverse them.

It could take Obama years to undo climate rules finalized more than 60 days before he takes office — the advantage the White House sought by getting them done by Nov. 1. But that strategy doesn’t account for the Congressional Review Act of 1996.

The law contains a clause determining that any regulation finalized within 60 legislative days of congressional adjournment is considered to have been legally finalized on the 15th legislative day of the new Congress, likely sometime in February. Congress then has 60 days to review it and reverse it with a joint resolution that can’t be filibustered in the Senate.

In other words, any regulation finalized in the last half-year of the Bush administration could be wiped out with a simple party-line vote in the Democrat-controlled Congress.

Despite the fact that the Congressional Review Act can’t be filibustered, Congress could still run into difficulty overturning Bush’s midnight regulations. But Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University thinks the Obama administration can simply package all the Bush regulations it wants overturned into one large vehicle to be voted up or down. That will limit the special pleading that’s sure to come from the people who stood to benefit from Bush’s moves.

What a relief. There’s hope after all! Imagine the mess Obama would have had to wade through trying to fight these final desperate acts of Bush’s while also dealing with the economic mess. That’s probably what Bush was counting on. If Congress can overturn all f these business-first, environment-last regulations, it’ll be a huge victory for anyone who cares about the earth.

Link [Politico]

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