The Congressional Review Act gives Congress 60 session days to overturn any federal rule after an agency submits it, using a joint resolution that passes the House by simple majority and the Senate without the possibility of a filibuster. Enacted in 1996 as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, it lay nearly dormant for two decades — used once against an ergonomics rule in 2001 — then became a standard weapon: Congress erased 16 rules at the start of the Trump administration in 2017 and more than a dozen at the start of the second term in 2025, per the Government Accountability Office's CRA database.
How does the process work?
When an agency finalizes a rule, it submits a report to Congress and the GAO, starting a clock measured in session days, not calendar days. Any member may introduce a resolution of disapproval. In the Senate, the motion to proceed to the resolution is not debatable, and passage needs only a simple majority — no 60-vote cloture. If both chambers pass and the president signs, the rule is void and, critically, the agency may not issue a substantially similar rule later without specific statutory authorization. If the president vetoes, Congress needs two-thirds of both chambers to override, which has never happened.
Why is the CRA powerful mostly in the first months of a presidency?
Because a resolution needs the president's signature, the CRA in practice works only when Congress and the White House are held by the same party and a prior administration's late-term rules are still inside the lookback window. Rules submitted in the final months of a presidency roll into the next Congress's review period — the so-called midnight rules cliff. That is why 2017 and 2025, unified-government openings, produced the only mass disapprovals: agriculture department accounting rules, labor and environmental measures, and education guidance-adjacent rules fell in batches. Mid-cycle, with a divided or opposing Congress, the CRA functions mainly as a messaging vehicle that fails on veto.
What are the limits and quirks?
First, the CRA applies to rules — including guidance documents that function as rules under the Supreme Court's reading — but not to every agency action; rules exempt from notice and comment generally escape it. Second, disapproval kills the entire rule without amendment: Congress cannot use the CRA to modify a rule, only to void it, which makes it a blunt instrument for technical fixes. Third, the “substantially similar” bar is unusually strong — the GAO and courts read it to bar reissuing the same policy in new clothing, so agencies must go back to Congress or redesign the rule from scratch. Fourth, the session-day math is genuinely confusing: the GAO publishes lookback tables each Congress telling agencies which rules remain vulnerable.
- Window: 60 Senate session days from submission, plus late-term carryover.
- Vehicle: joint resolution, Senate filibuster-proof.
- Effect: rule void; substantially similar reissuance banned without new statute.
What is the CRA's role in 2026?
With the current Congress's lookback window closed on 2025 rules, the act's live use is prospective: any major rule finalized this year becomes vulnerable to a future Congress's opening weeks, which shapes agency timing — administrations rush major rules to completion before election years to keep them outside the next midnight-rules window, while opponents promise CRA disapproval as campaign commitments. The act has become a standing feature of the regulatory cycle rather than a one-off.
LMH News publishes information, not political advice. History and mechanics follow the statute and the GAO's CRA records as of March 2026.
For more context, read How Federal Rulemaking Works: The Notice-and-Comment Process.
For more context, read How a Continuing Resolution Actually Funds the Government.
For more context, read How the Federal Budget Timeline Actually Works.