PLF’s Red Tape Rollback unveils new website

Just as critics of the CRA say door has closed, new website shows it’s wide open

ARLINGTON, VA;  May 23, 2017:  Red Tape Rollback, a project of Pacific Legal Foundation, is pleased to announce the launch of a newly redesigned website — www.redtaperollback.com.  After 20 years of limited use, the Congressional Review Act (CRA) was rediscovered as an effective means to overturn the worst “midnight” regulations of the Obama Administration. But legal scholars now say that it can eliminate even more rules from the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations that are unlawfully in effect.

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Red Tape Rollback serves as the nation’s online platform for education about the CRA and this new legal theory, along with an interactive feature for the public to help find rules that were never submitted to Congress as the CRA requires.  The site includes the full text of the law; its legislative history; comprehensive information on how it can be used more effectively; resources for media; and a developing list of federal regulations — both recent and longstanding — that are vulnerable to congressional rejection under the CRA.

“The Congressional Review Act requires agencies to submit almost every rule or guidance document to Congress for review before it goes into effect, but that wasn’t done — hundreds of rules were not lawfully reported to Congress,” said Todd Gaziano, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Law at Pacific Legal Foundation, and project leader for Red Tape Rollback.  “There are hundreds of these burdensome, job killing illegal rules on the books that the Trump administration can modify or withdraw.  If some are sent to Congress now, they can also be reviewed and disapproved by Congress with the CRA’s expedited procedure.”

In recent weeks, many have said that the window to use the CRA to undo regulations has closed.  However, a coalition of liberty-minded public policy and legal organizations have joined forces to challenge that notion. Red Tape Rollback is advocating an expanded use of the Congressional Review Act — potentially paving the way for hundreds of rules to be reconsidered.

“We have already found many illegal rules that should have never been enforced, and now with our new website, visitors can help us by searching the Government Accountability Office’s database to identify unreported rules and submit them directly to us,” said Gaziano.

For more information on Red Tape Rollback, or to schedule an interview, please contact Collin Callahan at "> or (703) 647-4112.