U.S. and Canada Sign Agreement on Regulatory Cooperation
Homepage featured content
Featured: The Congressional Review Act
What it does
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) establishes procedures for Congress to overturn final rules issued by federal agencies. After an agency's rule is reported to Congress, members of Congress have 60 days to introduce a joint resolution disapproving of the rule. When signed into law, these resolutions of disapproval (RDs) overturn the rule in question and bar agencies from issuing a "substantially similar" rule. The CRA offers two unique mechanisms: the Senate "fast-track" procedures and the "lookback" period. For an in-depth discussion of these mechanics and more, see our Regulatory Insight A Lookback at the Law: How Congress Uses the CRA.
CRA Use Trending Upward for Both Major and Non-major Rules, 1996-2022
CRA Window Exploratory Dashboard
Image
This dashboard allows users to explore the set of final rules published in the Federal Register in 2024, and how various lookback dates could affect the set of rules available for congressional review at the beginning of the next session of Congress. View Dashboard.
Commentary:
The Continued Evolution of the Congressional Review Act. Susan Dudley & Steve Balla, April 22, 2026. Previously considered largely a tool for the incoming Congress and president to overturn a departing president's midnight regulations, Congress has recently begun using the CRA in unanticipated ways.
Our Latest Publications
Cumulative Economically Significant Final Rules by Administration
Image
A Taxonomy of Regulatory Forms
There is a lot of interest in understanding what effects regulations have on economic growth and other macroeconomic measures, but measuring those impacts is challenging, in part because regulatory metrics themselves are rather blunt. Pages or even words in regulatory code may not tell the whole story. Intuitively, the form a regulation takes is relevant for predicting its impacts.
EPA’s Proposed Rule Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science
In this proposal, EPA aims to strengthen the transparency of the science it considers “pivotal” to its significant regulatory actions.