Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first, both of my colleagues from California are here, and I want to thank them for coming to the floor today to talk about this important matter in which Republicans want to appease their donors, and they want to break basically two Senate rules in order to get there--not just one, but two. The underlying matter here is about a law, the Clean Air Act, which falls in the jurisdiction of the Environment and Public Works Committee. So that is why I am here. A different law, the Congressional Review Act, creates a fast-track procedure in the Senate to disapprove Agency rules. For the most part, that Congressional Review Act, the CRA, is focused on rules during a short period immediately after they are made final and before they go into effect. We get a window where we can disapprove a rule from Congress. As soon as an Agency finalizes the rule, it submits the rule to the Government Accountability Office and to both Houses of Congress. That starts a 60-day review clock. That CRA also provides a lookback period where a Congress can reach back into the final 60 days of a previous Congress and review rules from a prior administration. The waivers go way back before the CRA period. Generally, there is no question what constitutes a rule under the CRA. There are different acts that the government can do. There are decisions; there are rules; there are laws. A rule is a specific thing under the CRA. Sometimes there are problems.…”