Dem
47
GOP
53
The Everything Bill that the House is working on is hard enough to put together as is, but House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) is working to make it even more complicated. He wants to give broad new powers to Donald Trump in addition to the tax cuts, immigration, and energy provisions. Jordan wants to weaken the independent agencies, like the FTC, and make them less independent of the president. He also wants to give the president the power to overturn vast numbers of regulations the agencies have written over the years.
Specifically, Jordan wants to turn the regulatory process on its head. At the moment, Congress gets an opportunity to overturn an agency regulation within a certain period of time after it is proposed. Jordan wants to change that to require Congress to affirmatively approve the regulation in advance. For example, if government scientists had strong evidence that some chemical being dumped in the environment by some industry causes cancer, the EPA couldn't ban it. It would have to get Congress to agree to that in advance. This new rule would basically make it nearly impossible for any of the agencies to ban anything, no matter how harmful. Many industries would like that very much, thank you.
Jordan is trying to sell this reversal as limiting presidential power because it reduces the power of Executive Branch agencies and increases the power of the Legislative Branch. It would put rulemaking in the hands of completely unqualified members of Congress, rather than agency experts. It would mean Congress gets involved in every rulemaking decision. Congress can't function as it is, so giving it more things to do would mean no rules ever get made. For many industries, this is a feature, not a bug.
One key issue here is how Jordan wants to do this. If he crams it into the Everything Bill so it can use the budget reconciliation process, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough might say "Nope" since it is not a budget issue. If Jordan tries to pass it as a stand-alone bill, the Democrats will filibuster it. This problem is why it hasn't passed yet. But a guy can dream, can't he? (V)