Mike Levin: “it has been 17 years that I have fought for and supported a mechanism for congressional review of agency rules before…”

“it has been 17 years that I have fought for and supported a mechanism for congressional review of agency rules before they take effect. Believe it or not I ran for the Senate in 1978 on the need for legislative veto. That's what we called the right of Congress to review important regulations and stop the ones that don't make sense before they take effect. After the Chadha case, we changed the name from legislative veto to legislative review since the Supreme Court ruled that legislative vetoes--involving only one or two houses of Congress without the President--were unconstitutional. This bill uses a joint resolution of disapproval which is a constitutional mechanism and which was the cornerstone of a bill I introduced with Senator David Boren from Oklahoma back in the early 1980's. My proposal was adopted with respect to the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It was passed by the Senate, with respect to all Federal agencies, on the omnibus regulatory reform bill, S. 1080, in the 96th Congress. But it didn't become law then, and despite repeated efforts over the year, it hadn't become law until this time. As a longtime member of the Governmental Affairs Committee, I have worked on various regulatory reform proposals, but none has been as significant to me as legislative veto or legislative review.”