Congressional Republicans have a fleeting opportunity to deal a crushing blow to the administrative state if they can manage to wedge the REINS Act into the GOP’s reconciliation bill.
The REINS Act, short for the “Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act,” would require Congress to approve “major rules,” which proponents say will help restore the constitutional balance of powers and save the economy billions by reining in the rulemaking discretion of executive agencies. The GOP has an opportunity to bypass the Senate filibuster and fast-track at least some of the bill’s provisions into law using the “one big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, but procedural and political hurdles lie ahead.
Despite Congress being the lawmaking branch of government, unelected bureaucrats now issue many more mandates with the force of law, according to the House Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust. During the last year of the Biden administration, for instance, Congress passed around 150 laws, whereas executive branch agencies finalized over 3,000 rules.
The law is intended to “rein in unelected bureaucrats” and “protects individual rights, and brings accountability back to the rulemaking process by reasserting congressional authority,” Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has introduced the legislation in the Senate, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In late April, the House Judiciary Committee approved a version of the REINS Act in its portion of the reconciliation bill, which aims to advance the Trump administration’s priorities. If Republicans can pass the budget bill with the REINS Act language included, the Senate reconciliation procedure allows the majority party the unique opportunity to pass qualifying legislation with a simple majority vote.
@SenMikeLee and I have been fighting to make sure the REINS Act is part of the reconciliation bill. This is THE way to drain the swamp and put We The People back in charge. Let’s go! -CKC https://t.co/3ijeaR2ybJ
— Rep. Cammack Press Office (@RepKatCammack) May 14, 2025
“This is a multigenerational change,” Republican Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida, who introduced the legislation in the past three Congresses, recently told The Washington Examiner. “This is a realignment of culture in Washington. This is bigger than any other element, in my opinion, than anything else in reconciliation.”
The REINS Act has been introduced in every Congress since 2009 and has passed the House on multiple occasions, including in 2023. However, with most Democrats opposed to the proposal, it has never passed the Senate as a standalone piece of legislation thanks in large part to the 60-vote threshold required to overcome the filibuster.
Regulations have steadily increased over the past several decades. Between 1970 and 2019, the number of federal restrictions grew from 400,000 to over 1,000,000, according to QuantGov. A 2024 House Oversight Committee report found that the Biden administration imposed over $1.7 trillion in regulatory costs on the economy, with the Environmental Protection Agency alone responsible for $1.3 trillion.
Even if the House passes its version of the reconciliation package, Republican supporters of the REINS Act will need to argue that it meets the Byrd test, which stipulates that reconciliation bills must pertain exclusively to spending or revenue.
Previous REINS Act iterations defined “major rules” as those that result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more. The current language modified this definition to encompass rules that “increase revenues” in order to conform to the Byrd test, Cammack told The Washington Examiner.
To that end, the language may need to be pared back even further to include only rules with direct budgetary impacts, REINS Act advocate Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah suggested.
“In addition to the great work the Trump Administration has already done, there may be ways for Congress to build on the president’s success. While there are other priorities I believe need to take center stage … I am exploring what might be possible through reconciliation. Some explicitly budgetary elements of REINS may be in play,” Lee told the DCNF.
Such a change would still “help establish a principle of government accountability,” but would limit the bill’s effectiveness in tackling the expanding administrative state, according to Wayne Crews, regulatory studies fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“This partial REINS is a step in the right direction, but it won’t be full congressional accountability,” said Crews, who speculated that the savings would amount to tens of billions rather than hundreds of billions. “I disagree with the notion that regulations ought not be regarded as having fiscal impacts. I understand the letter of the law, but regulations can have a greater impact than federal outlays can.”
Speaker Mike Johnson told Politico that he hoped the REINS Act language would be included in the final bill. However, Soren Dayton, director of governance at the Foundation for American Innovation, expressed some skepticism, noting that while the REINS Act would expand congressional authority, it would also subject lawmakers to greater scrutiny.
“If you actually want Congress to have more accountability and power, they need to take accountability. And often they don’t want to,” Dayton told the DCNF. “Are they sure they want to vote on these things? I’m not actually sure whether, in the end, leaders want this.”
Moderate Republicans in the Senate, such as Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, declined to comment on whether they will back the proposal, Politico reported. Both senators have objected to other aspects of the proposed reconciliation bill.
Many Democrats have taken a hard line against it, including Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the Democrats’ ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, who criticized the proposal, saying it would “handcuff the agencies that work to make sure that our food and drugs are safe and our air and water are clean.”
GAS MUZZLERShttps://t.co/hTI7251lp1
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 30, 2024
“It would be a war on regulations,” Minority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois recently told Politico. “To take that authority away from the executive branch would be a serious mistake.”
Advocates for the REINS Act argue that these concerns are overblown.
“REINS does not mean the end of beneficial regulations on public health and safety, despite what chicken-little progressives may claim,” AEI Senior Fellow and Berkeley law professor John Yoo recently wrote. “Agencies will continue to develop expertise and knowledge, which they can apply in proposed regulations, but the constitutional and political responsibility for their enactment will remain with Congress.”
If Congress succeeds in passing the REINS Act, it would be following in the steps of the Supreme Court, which dealt a blow to the administrative state in 2024 by overturning a legal theory known as the Chevron deference. For decades, this legal theory directed courts to defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of laws when the underlying statute was deemed ambiguous by those agencies.
Dayton highlighted that while “Democrats are presenting this as some radical small government thing,” REINS Act-style laws have been adopted in many states, including Florida, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, and Utah, and other states, such as Ohio, are considering similar measures.
“Regardless of what happens with that endeavor, it is important that Congress continues toward final passage of the REINS Act. We must save America from death by regulatory strangulation,” said Lee.
While President Donald Trump has not explicitly commented on the REINS Act, he has identified deregulation as a major administrative priority. On January 31, he signed an executive order requiring agencies to identify at least 10 existing rules, regulations, or guidance to repeal for every new regulation proposed.
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