Editor’s Note: Curtis W. Copeland’s July 2014 study, “Congressional Review Act: Many Recent Final Rules Were Not Submitted to GAO and Congress,” is attached here. CRE’s January 2010 letter to the Senate and House advising them of EPA’s violations of the Congressional Rview Act is attached here. A December 2009 Copeland/Congressional Research Service study, “Congressional Review Act: Rules Not Submitted to GAO and Congress,” attached here, was cited by CRE in our advisory letter.
From: The Washington Post
Over the past 21/2 years, the Obama administration has published hundreds of rules — on how wheelchairs should be stowed aboard U.S. aircraft, how foreign trade zones should be regulated, how voting assistance should be provided for U.S. citizens overseas and so on.
There’s a problem, however: Technically speaking, these and about 1,800 other regulations shouldn’t be in effect, because they weren’t reported to Congress as required. Yet there is little that lawmakers or the courts can do about it.
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“It’s pretty apparent that the system is broken,” said Curtis Copeland, a retired Congressional Research Service staffer who discovered the issue. “It would seem this is one area where congressional Republicans and Democrats could get together and say: ‘This is crazy. We can fix this.’ ”
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