CRA Resolutions Are Paybacks to Industry

For Immediate Release: April 3, 2025

Contact: David Rosen, drosen@citizen.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Lawmakers are using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to throw out important worker, consumer, health, safety, and environmental protections, enriching their industry donors at the public’s expense, the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards warned today.

The Coalition maintains a tracker of CRA resolutions introduced in the current Congress. Newly added above the tracker are profiles of some of the targeted rules with links to additional resources from coalition members leading the fight to oppose them.

“The beneficiaries of these CRA resolutions will include banks, Big Oil and Gas, the crypto industry, digital payment companies, consumer appliance manufacturers, and more. Who will lose out? Everyone else,” said Rachel Weintraub, executive director of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards. “No one in either party voted for higher prices, dirtier air and water, more scams and rip-offs, more dangerous workplaces, and deadlier natural disasters, but that’s exactly what we’ll get when lawmakers use the CRA to strike down rules.”

Next week, the House is expected to vote on two CRA resolutions. The first is S.J. Res. 28 to strike down a U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule that requires digital payment apps like Venmo and Apple Pay to be regulated under the agency’s supervisory authority, just like banks and credit unions. The resolution targeting this rule passed the Senate on March 5 by a vote of 51-47.

The second is S.J. Res. 18 to strike down another CFPB rule that caps overdraft fees at $5 and treats overdraft fees as credit, saving households $5 billion a year. The resolution targeting this rule passed the Senate on March 27 by a vote of 52-48. Hundreds of organizations have written to Congress urging opposition to both resolutions.

“Both of these rules provide needed protections so that consumers can transact in the financial services space and ensure that the products and services they use work for them and not against them,” said Susan Weinstock, CEO of Consumer Federation of America. “Big Tech companies providing financial services should not lead to less privacy, more fraud, and less equal access to banking. And unfettered overdraft fees should not continue to push far too many customers out of the banking system altogether.”

The CRA allows Congress by simple majority vote in both chambers with limited debate, no possibility of a filibuster, and the president’s signature to overturn recently issued regulations. The agency that issued the rule is then prohibited from issuing a new one that is “substantially the same,” but the scope of this prohibition has never been tested in court. Importantly, the CRA includes a carryover period allowing a new Congress to strike down rules issued in the final months of the previous administration.