CSS and More Than 50 Groups Oppose Including the REINS Act in a Budget Reconciliation Bill

April 28, 2025 | Download PDF

The Honorable Mike Johnson
Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Hakeem Jeffries
Democratic Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable John Thune
Majority Leader
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Chuck Schumer
Minority Leader
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510

CC: Members of House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, House Judiciary Committee and Senate Committee on the Judiciary

Dear Speaker Johnson, Democratic Leader Jeffries, Majority Leader Thune, Minority Leader Schumer:

The undersigned allied organizations strongly oppose the inclusion of any language mentioning or similar to the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, H.R. 142/ S. 485 in a Budget Reconciliation bill. Both the House and Senate Budget Resolutions passed this February included language mentioning or similar to the REINS Act.

The REINS Act represents one of the most radical threats in generations to our government’s ability to protect the public from harm. The bill’s clear aim is to halt the implementation of critical new public health and safety safeguards, financial reforms, and worker protections – making industry even less accountable to the public. It would do nothing to improve protections for the American public but instead would benefit only those corporations that wish to game the system and evade safety standards.

Under the REINS Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and our other protector agencies could not enforce a “major” rule – a rule with a large economic impact – unless both houses of Congress affirmatively approved it, with no alterations, within a 70-day window. It would stop the most important rules, including the substantial number of non-controversial rules agencies produce every year, from being finalized.

Currently the process of putting forth the rules necessary to implement and enforce public safeguards and protections can take several years. For example, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been working on a standard to protect health care and social assistance workers from workplace violence since 2016, and over the past seven years the agency has only progressed to the small business review pre-rulemaking stage. During this time, the rate of serious and preventable workplace violence injuries has increased for workers in health care and social assistance.

Part of the reason for this lengthy process is that large teams of professional experts at agencies must work diligently to gather and process complex information and solicit and incorporate input from a broad range of interested stakeholders when designing new rules. A failure to follow this process carefully means that a rule can be struck down by the courts during judicial review. In contrast, the REINS Act would allow congressional inaction to supersede all of this painstaking effort. The most common sense, non-controversial rules could be blocked for any reason or no reason at all.

Congress already has the first and last word when it comes to agency rulemaking, making the REINS Act unnecessary. Agencies can only exercise authority that has been delegated by Congress in authorizing legislation. Any agency attempt to overstep these bounds is likely to result in judicial scrutiny and reversal of the agency action. And Congress always retains the authority to enact new legislation to block any rule it opposes.

The REINS Act would subvert these regular order legislative processes and instead incentivize congressional inaction, thwarting the most beneficial public protections by requiring Congress to approve them.

Federal agencies employ personnel with policy, scientific, and technical expertise to produce smart and sensible regulations. The REINS Act would give special interests even more influence over the regulatory process by creating a new opportunity for politics to trump science and defeat the public will.

By giving one chamber of Congress veto power over any new significant public health and safety protection, no matter how non-controversial or sensible it may be, the REINS Act is designed to leverage the dysfunction and obstructionism that plague our political process to block agencies’ efforts to fulfill their statutory mandates to pursue public protections.

Further, the goal of the REINS Act is unequivocally to rescind regulations. To be included in the reconciliation process, provisions cannot cause a change in spending or revenues that is “merely incidental” to the provision’s non-budgetary effects. The application of the Byrd Rule to the REINS Act would render it extraneous since the clear purpose of the REINS Act or similar provision is to repeal regulations.

For these reasons, we strongly urge you to oppose the inclusion of the REINS Act or anything similar to the REINS Act with a goal of establishing a fast-track process to repeal regulations from the Budget Reconciliation bill.

Sincerely,

AFL-CIO
American Association of University Women (AAUW)
American Bird Conservancy
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
American Heart Association
Americans for Financial Reform
Cancer Prevention and Treatment Fund
Center for Biological Diversity
Center for Economic Justice
Center for Progressive Reform
Center for Responsible Lending
Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)
Clean Water Action
Climate Action Campaign
Coalition for Sensible Safeguards
Coalition on Human Needs
Communications Workers of America (CWA)
Consumer Action
Consumer Federation of America
Cultivating Lives Educational Services, Inc
Earthjustice Action
Economic Policy Institute
EDF Action
Endangered Species Coalition
Friends of the Earth
Impact Fund
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
International Chemical Workers Union Council
International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW)
Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health
League of Conservation Voters
National Association of Consumer Advocates
National Consumer Law Center
National Consumers League
National Employment Law Project
National Health Law Program
National Women’s Law Center
Natural Resources Defense Council
New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center
Oceana
Oregon Consumer Justice
Oregon Consumer League
P Street
People Power United
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Public Citizen
Public Good Law Center
Public Justice Center
QC Performing Arts, Inc
South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center
Southern Environmental Law Center
SMOHIT Sheet Metal Occupational Health Institute Trust
Texas Appleseed
Union of Concerned Scientists
United Steelworkers (USW)
Virginia Citizens Consumer Council
Womxn From The Mountain