Vance Backed Attempts To Gut Dozens of Biden Rules

Since the start of his term in Congress, Ohio Sen. and now-Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has sponsored two dozen GOP attempts to kill rules pushed by the Biden administration — fighting policies and protections on everything from new corporate climate disclosure rules to student loan forgiveness.

Vance’s voting record is a preview of the path the vice president might chart under a second Trump administration — and a reminder of the vulnerability of some of the Biden administration’s key successes, like consumer and worker protections issued by agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.

Vance, who former President Donald Trump selected as his running mate on July 15, co-sponsored 24 bills to repeal Biden administration rules and consumer protections. He also voted in favor of nine other similar bills in the Senate, according to The Lever’s analysis of the dozens of GOP attempts to kill consumer safeguards over the last two years.

All of these bills were introduced under the Congressional Review Act, a 1996 law that allows lawmakers to overturn new regulations during a short review period after they’ve been finalized, a powerful tool for an incoming administration to undo a predecessor’s policies. Over the last two years, these bills were blocked either by the Democrats’ narrow Senate majority, or a veto from President Joe Biden, keeping the rules in place.

Yet the Congressional Review Act’s deadline has been looming over the remaining months of Biden’s tenure as president. Under this obscure law, rules that are not yet finalized may be quickly overturned if a second Trump administration comes to power in November.

“One way to think about it is if Trump wins in November, these are regulations that his administration might go back and try to repeal or weaken,” said James Goodwin, the policy director of the Center for Progressive Reform. 

Goodwin called Vance’s efforts over the past two years mere “political theater,” only a glimpse at what’s to come.

If Vance and a new Republican administration are ultimately successful at undermining rules they have already attempted to weaken — like the Environmental Protection Agency’s new air quality standards or the Consumer Financial Protection’s Bureau’s various new rules cracking down on junk fees — it could prove a major victory for their corporate backers, which have been fighting ambitious new pro-worker, antimonopoly policies from the Biden administration.

The hotel industry, for example, helped spearhead a legal battle against the National Labor Relations Board’s “joint employer” worker protections that would guarantee new labor protections for contract and franchise workers at companies like Amazon, and which are now stalled in the courts. The trucking industry has also been fighting the Environmental Protection Agency’s new emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks — another rule that Vance and his colleagues tried to kill.

As The Lever reported last week, Vance also successfully pushed to weaken federal environmental rules that would protect steelworkers from carcinogens during his time in Congress.

“Whether it’s J.D. Vance or any other senator or member of the house, I would suspect that if they’re active in introducing or co-sponsoring resolutions of disapproval, they’re carefully curating the set of regulations they want to target,” said Steven Balla, a political science professor at George Washington University who codirects the school’s Regulatory Studies Center.

“A Very Powerful Weapon”

The Congressional Review Act gives lawmakers the power to overturn new final rules from regulatory agencies — including environmental standards, labor protections, and antitrust guidance. From the time a rule is put on the books, lawmakers have 60 business days to pass a bill to overturn the rule, and then sign the bill into law.

Lawmakers have the power to simply repeal the law behind the rule itself, of course, by passing additional legislation. But the Congressional Review Act, which is not subject to a filibuster, helps cut the red tape in the legislative process, providing a simpler, more expedited way to kill new rules.

The law “gets Congress out of Congress’s own way to repeal regulations. That is the Congressional Review Act in a nutshell,” Goodwin said.

There are also lasting implications from the law’s use. Once a rule is repealed under the Congressional Review Act, the agency is largely prohibited from issuing a similar rule in the future. 

“It has this nuclear fallout quality to it,” Goodwin said — potentially keeping the agency from touching similar subject matter once a rule is repealed under the law. This is not the case when a rule is overturned through other means, such as through a second rule-making process at the agency.

In 2001, for example, the Congressional Review Act was used to repeal an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule protecting workers from ergonomic hazards — the musculoskeletal dangers that workers face when doing manual labor, like back injuries. Ever since, there have been virtually no federal standards on ergonomic injuries.

Under the Biden administration, Republicans have had little opportunity to use the Congressional Review Act. Bills to overturn a rule Biden issues must currently make it through a Democrat-controlled Senate, and be signed by the president himself. So each attempt to overturn rules has eventually died at Biden’s desk, if it managed to get there at all.

But that could all change if Trump comes into power in January.

Due to a 60-day “lookback” provision in the law, rules that are finalized close to the end of a legislative session can still be reviewed — and repealed — when Congress returns to session next year in January 2025.

This means that if Trump wins the presidency, and the GOP flips the Senate and retains control of the House, securing a Republican trifecta of power, they would be able to quickly overturn any rules that were finalized in the final days of the current Congress.

If the “stars align” for the GOP, Goodwin said, “then the Congressional Review Act becomes a very powerful weapon for all those rules that happen to fall in the 60-day period.”

It’s still unclear what rules those may be. The lookback period depends on how many days Congress is in session before January, which is still undetermined, and the way these days are counted is set through opaque and complicated rules laid out in the law. 

Balla, the George Washington professor, said he believed that the lookback period was most likely to start “about right now,” at the end of July. This means that “any move that’s finalized in the period from now until the end of the Congress — those would be the ones vulnerable to being overturned by the Congressional Review Act, should Trump win the election,” he said.

Dan Goldbeck, the director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, a right-leaning think tank that tracks regulatory developments, agreed with Balla that this date was a “reasonable guess.”

Key pending Biden rules — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposal to ban “non-sufficient funds” fees, some of the Environmental Protection Agency’s still-pending rules to limit PFAS exposure, and Federal Trade Commission rule banning subscription traps and junk fees — may be vulnerable to being quickly overturned if they are issued in the coming months, since they have not yet been finalized.

The looming deadline was a likely factor in a slate of major Biden rules coming down this spring: the major crackdown on PFAS contamination; regulations to promote electric vehicles; and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s landmark rule banning excessive credit card late fees, among many others.

“Because [the Congressional Review Act deadline] is such a moving target, it’s tough to say if that was the main motivation to release the rules when they did,” Goldbeck said, but added that there was likely at least some consideration of the deadline.

These rules might be safe from a quick reversal under the Congressional Review Act, should Republicans sweep the elections in the fall.

But as Balla emphasized, there are other ways for a new administration to undercut a predecessor’s policies. “The [Congressional Review Act] is only one tool that a second Trump administration would use, or could use,” he said.

And Vance’s voting record on Congressional Review Act proposals may predict what that could look like.

Vance’s Industry Backing

Vance was elected to the Senate in 2022, armed with a Trump endorsement, and took office in January 2023. Over the last two years, he has taken aim at a crucial slate of Biden regulations under the Congressional Review Act. Many of the 24 resolutions Vance co-sponsored also won the robust support of the Republican Senate minority. Some even made it to Biden’s desk.

Many of the rules that Vance took aim at were the Biden administration’s environmental policies: the new emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, a suite of new greenhouse gas emissions requirements, and rules on energy conservation for gas furnaces.

And he also co-sponsored a resolution that would have overturned a Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring public companies to disclose their emissions and climate-related risks to investors. That rule is now on hold as a legal battle brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest corporate lobbying group, plays out in the courts.

Vance once spoke of his concerns around climate change and of the importance of “clean energy,” but as Politico reported this spring, he has reversed course on environmental issues as an influx of oil and gas industry cash has come his way.

The fossil fuel industry was one of Vance’s biggest supporters during his Senate bid, giving more to his campaign than to those of many other Republican lawmakers.

But it’s not only environmental protections that Vance has tried to overturn during his time in the Senate. He also co-sponsored bills to overturn Biden administration rules that require additional transparency from companies around cybersecurity incidents; a Department of Education rule that protects trans students from discrimination; and a gun control rule from the Department of Justice.

These rules, though, were finalized far enough in advance that they will likely not be able to be overturned by the Congressional Review Act, even if Trump takes power in November.